Richard-Yves Sitoski

Mountain Lions

The thought of them makes me panic. Of all the ways
to go, the dirtiest. Life ripped in chunks from the body.

The thought of you in bed makes me panic.
Your breath so shallow it wouldn’t flutter goose down.

I never knew sleep could be so total,
learned the hard way the first time I shook and

shook you, my heart pounding with disaster.
One night you said a thing you couldn’t walk back.

All next day it stalked me through town,
slinking around buildings on silent pads.

It entered Coles and snarled through the stacks.
It sat at my bedside, eyes glaring night-vision yellow.

This in early spring, around the time we learned
that you and the cat were both diabetic. Each

on your own was serious, but two at once
was almost funny in a Looney Tunes

anvil-drop sort of way. The cat was pissing
on rugs and sofas and if it used the box would put

its front half in and let the business end piddle
weakly on the floor. You were more bedridden

than normal, ate nothing, faded over Netflix
till the Jardiance kicked in. I realized then

what the Fates have in store. Knew straightaway
that Atropos will shear your thread

quick and clean while you sleep, all so I can count
the empty hours till she hacks at mine

with the butter knife of heart disease. I learned what
every Instagram poet has been saying for years,

that I mustn’t hold grudges longer than cats given
needles. Or else I’d be mauled by a hundred pounds

of mange, ticks, and worms, be shredded
by broken fangs in a mouth reeking

of abscess, be carried off by hostility with
a northerly blowing through its gaping ribs.

So I beg your indulgence. If every name
is a synonym for grief then

let us shut up and dance in the kitchen,
ignoring domestic atrocities.

Let us sway, Kelly and Charisse, cruising
the toast crumbs and sand of an unswept floor,

you holding the cat while I hold you
until it squirms to be set down.

Look at it, frisky on insulin, its old self,
writhing on its back for attention.

How gentle it is now it’s decided we’re worth its trust,
as if it knew, somehow, it is we who keep it alive.