Pawprints on my soul
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.
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 lint-rolling the evidence of you from my life.
Hating that the blankets looked like they’d grown a coat of their own.
I cling to the fibers that remain, weaving them into the fabric of my soul.
I still reach for the bag of kibble, the crinkle of the plastic a phantom,
Waiting for you to press against my shins, demanding your due.
I’d give anything to hear those relentless meows again,
The soft pleas for breakfast and the desperate cries for just a moment of attention.
I used to shush you, asking for 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 pulse of your life-
Now this silence is a heavy weight I’m not strong enough to lift.
The silence has a texture now, thick and suffocating like an old wool blanket.
I look at your collar, 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People ask why I'm so withdrawn.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.
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.
I'm 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.
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