Was going to write something this morning,
but then a cat climbs up on my lap
and curls into a tight, plump, capital "C,"
settling onto the brown, wide-wale corduroy
of the bathrobe my mother sewed for me
over thirty years ago,
and then the cat rests his face
on my writing hand,
so what can I do?

I just breathe in and out
and feel the cat's warmth
sink through the corduroy
as the cat feels my warmth
rise through the corduroy
and all of it mediated
by my mother's desire–
over decades and the threshold of death–
to keep us cozy.

So anyway,
that's why I didn't write anything this morning.

Text and image © 2013 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.