Cold Shining's

A sooty cat prowls under a nail-struck star-light to rub against my legs – yellow eyes outposts of a far-removed planet. Standing by my door looking up into the riveted blackness, I sense the remote clanking of casements and portals, the cold iron blinking of bygone lights. I take out the trash, ice-claws buffet my bones, the hanging distance above me snares my breath. The cat’s eyes have closed, it has come back from the beyond, to be pulsing and close; its purr as near to me now as the blood in my lips.