Into the morning, briskly, I walked,
trouble barking at my heels,
fear riding my wake,
one long tooth away.
Everything felt like storm
though the day was bright.
Everything felt like an ending underway
as I walked on,
looking for a new way home,
away from all that tracked me.
Instead I found a dead cat
by the side of the road,
its mouth open slightly
as if to taste its last autumn air.
A cat I didn’t know, had never known, and didn’t love.
But the thing that stopped me so that all the
worries at my heels piled up against my
back like blind shadows, the thing that
made everything suddenly quiet and still,
was the coat that someone had laid over the cat.
A good coat, worth something,
tucked up to its chin as if to keep the body
warm while someone went in search of
a shovel, a way to come back here
to scoop the body out of the pretty leaves,
to lay it in a hole somewhere and cover it up.
I wanted that coat as I have seldom wanted anything,
certain that I would have been given it, had I asked.
–
Lauren Wolk is a novelist, poet, visual artist, and arts advocate living on Cape Cod.
© 2024, Lauren Wolk
Halfway Down the Stairs 