Tabby Cat Spit (Poem)

Fuck your box,

your petty revenge,

these scrawled lines in the mud you keep carving,

though the original language is dead.

I sling it back now,

your mud,

with gypsy curses,

that sing like the sacred bell you hoped to crack.

I will not be shades of black and white,

a page reread,

a coastline charted.

You no longer know the kinks in my tail,

what treats make me surrender tender belly.

I will overflow the edges of your blank page with spots,

and stripes,

with hues in cat's eye green,

that see through you,

like felines,

always one paw in the other world.

I will sew these wounds closed,

stitching with the same line,

that ran through his failing body,

with which you tried to choke me,

a bowtie of a different sort.

I will never sit and be silent,

nodding deadly to your empty.

I will lean past the edge of comfortable,

and shit on the box you've tried to shove me into,

like a stray tom cat tabby,

sniffing the air with my pink nose,

smelling the poison in your outstretched hand,

my ears slowly flattening against my skull,

a hiss forming in my throat,

hearing the crinkle of the black plastic trash bag in your other.

bvk, 2020.