Of Mornings, Cats, and Small Windows

It's morning...again.

Cat always gives me that look when I hesitate to crawl out of bed. What's wrong with you? It's morning! Wish you could see cat sitting next to me, pawing my shoulder. Get up, lazy bones!

Even stranger still, is how cat looks at me when I jump out of bed. Eyes half-opened with a kind of sadness that says, "The world can wait a few more minutes. Go back to sleep. That's what I'm going to do!"

The world from the view of a cat must be quite interesting. Everything is its own choice. Do I face the world head on and conquer? Or...take a nice long cat nap?

Cat sits and stares out our small window. There's not much to see; at least that I can tell. However, something is interesting enough to keep cat watching for hours on end. I wake up in the night--cat watches. I get up in the morning--cat watches.

I wonder: is it what cat sees that determines what kind of day it is? Shall I make the day wait or greet it? Some omen shows itself to be good or bad. Perhaps, not even that...just indifferent.

Perhaps, it is what I do not see that keeps me from seeing the excitement of today like cat does.

Carving Pumpkins

Something died inside me last week. I find myself smiling at people as though everything is okay, but it's not. My smile might as well be carved in pumpkin. Soon enough it's gonna start to rot and you'll see it smashed along the side of the road with the other fake smiles.

But, I have it good. While the pain I feel is drawn on my face with washable marker, I see it carved in stone elsewhere. Everyone sees and thinks that s/he is exhausted. I wish that was the case. It's more than that.

S/he has been changed and irreversibly so.

What happened was cruel and worse than I could ever imagine. I was angry when I heard and can see myself yelling at you. Why didn't you call me?! Why didn't you call me?

I could have come; I could have done something...I couldn't have done a thing. You were raped.

I couldn't have been there then, but I'm here now. You walk with the weight of a heavy secret and even worse is the pain from keeping it. If I could put a band-aid on it I would.

It hurts so bad to watch you suffer. But know this, you did the right thing by talking to the police. Maybe, just maybe...someone else won't find themselves writing about the pain of knowing because of what you did.

I listen to people gripe day in and day out about misleading sales signs, bad weather, noisy kids and I smile...

My pumpkin carved smile can only go so far as to cover the howling within.