Under the Trumpet Vine
Until one of us moved first, we stayed like that, still. The words I hadn't managed to say by day were still in my mouth, and it seemed the cat had agreed to hear them in my place.
Until one of us moved first, we stayed like that, still. The words I hadn't managed to say by day were still in my mouth, and it seemed the cat had agreed to hear them in my place.
From beyond the alley wall, the cat in the yard watched me for a long time. At the end of that gaze, our pause had been carried over just as it was.
I couldn't tell whether the cat had given an answer or simply been there, but while its gaze crossed the wall, I was breathing evenly for the first time.
There was a night the cat sat by the window gazing at the trumpet vine in the yard. I sat beside it, waiting to see when it would turn its head.
Beside a cat that wouldn't turn its head, I too saw again the trumpet vine of that night. I've come to hope those flowers now hang not in the yard but before some other door.
I'm reminded of an old man on the bus-stop bench toward evening, palm open, looking at the sky. Knowing nothing would land there, he stayed like that a long time.
I watched the sunset light fall across his palm, rest a moment in that empty hand, and fade. I too held on to nothing that day, but that empty hand felt warm, if anything.
A cat pressed against the wall at the end of the alley slipped quietly into the shade, away from the sun. Where the cat had been, only a single ivy leaf remained.
That ivy leaf still nods slightly in its place whenever the wind blows. Watching that movement, the time I stood beneath the trumpet vine grew a little longer.