Strange Creatures
Updated: Mar 7
I thought it might have been
the neighbor’s cat, a dusty thing,
and kind, who bowed her head
in a sort of reverence toward
any open hand, but the thing
that slumbered out of the bushes
was far too big. An opossum,
strange, quick-eyed, and grey,
made her way from the shadows
and into the sun of your lawn,
on the gentle mission she called her life.
Once, walking down the side street
of a city as sandy and sun-washed
as our own, you told me that you’d like
to live with me when we got out of here
- if we ever figured out how -
and I think I believed you. I began to talk
of tattered rugs and shoes by the door,
but you turned your eyes from mine,
some rotting premonition sitting under
your tongue. Now, we stand
in the kitchen of the home you made
with another, and watch the opossum
reach out toward the ripening tomato
and take a bite. That nearly newborn
fruit never quite got the chance
to flower, but it will come back,
somehow, in it’s own way.