|
Every day I miss your pawprints.
The muddy tracks I once rushed to erase.
“What a disaster,” I’d mutter, scrubbing at the kitchen tile until it shone,
Never realizing that the mess was a map of your joy,
That you were just leaving a trail through my kitchen so I could always find where you’d been
Now I search the corners of the baseboard for a smudge of you, a ghost of a paw pad,
Anything to prove that the rhythm of your coming and going wasn’t just a dream.
Anything to remember what I’d washed away.
The hallway feels twice as long without the click-clack of your nails,
The frantic, joyful percussion that announced you before you ever appeared.
I catch myself avoiding the spot in the sunshine where you’d stretch,
Unfurling like a ribbon in the sun, claiming the heat as your own.
Every day I miss your fur.
I miss finding those stray silver strands clinging to every single sweater I owned.
I used to spend so much time brushing you away, lint-rolling the evidence of you from my life.
Hating that the blankets looked like they’d grown a coat of their own.
Now I cling to the fibers that remain, weaving them into the fabric of my soul.
I found one today, caught in the zipper of my winter coat.
A tiny, translucent thread that held more of your essence than any photograph ever could.
I couldn't bring myself to throw it away.
The ritual of the morning is broken, a jagged knife that cuts through the silence every time I wake.
I still reach for the bag of kibble, the crinkle of the plastic a phantom sound in my ears,
Waiting for the weight of you to press against my shins, demanding your due.
I’d give anything to hear those relentless, annoying meows again,
The soft pleas for breakfast and the desperate, piercing cries for just a moment of attention.
I used to shush you, asking for just five more minutes of peace, just one quiet cup of coffee.
What a fool I was to think that peace was something found in the absence of your voice.
This house used to be so loud with the beautiful, chaotic pulse of your life-
Now this silence is a heavy weight I’m just not strong enough to lift.
The silence has a texture now, thick and suffocating like an old wool blanket.
It settles in the pantry where your bowls used to clatter, it sits in the chair you claimed.
I whisper your name when I’m alone.
Don’t ask me why I do it.
Maybe I’m hoping for a flick of an ear or the soft thump of a tail against the floorboards.
God, I even miss your fish breath.
When you’d lay heavy on my chest, a warm anchor in a world that never stops moving,
And lick my nose with that sandpaper tongue until I finally woke up.
You were so small, a handful of bones and spirit, but somehow you filled up my entire universe,
Expanding to occupy every gap in my routine, every quiet corner of my soul.
And now my heart feels raw and empty in the place where your love used to sit and purr.
I look at your collar, the bell silenced, the leather worn soft by the curve of your neck,
And I wonder how something so little could leave a hole so vast it swallows the light.
People ask why I'm so withdrawn.
I have to tell them you're gone, and the word “gone” feels like a lie, a betrayal.
Because I still see you in the peripheral of my vision, a flash of a tail around the door,
A shadow moving across the porch where you used to guard the perimeter from squirrels.
I just wish you were here, more than anything.
I would trade every clean floor, every un-snagged sweater, every silent night in the world
For just one more muddy step, one more ruined rug, one more hour of your company.
Im still waiting to see those messy pawprints on the tile when the rain starts to fall,
But all you really left behind were the deep, unerasable pawprints on my soul.
They are permanent now, etched in the memories of the way you loved me without asking why,
The way you knew I was sad before I even felt the first sting of a tear.
You were the keeper of my secrets and the rhythm of my home.
Although I've wiped your tracks from my tile, they lead me forward.
Step by aching step.
|