Bobbi, I am Healing

You spend your last afternoon looking
out the front screen door. Your kidneys
practicing betrayal, your sophisticated
stance, all bone and bloat.
Hosting your own memorial. Neighborhood
strays and patio spiders
paying their respects.

After euthanasia, the vet lets me take you home,
your body wrapped in woven nap
time blanket. I lay you on the living
room table and drink prosecco until the sky swallows
the worst day’s sun to give way
to more worst days.

You are buried by my father’s
vegetable garden with the toys you shredded
and stones I charged under the full moon.
When a new, ripe you doesn’t grow,
I have to do something
with my hands. Plant new seeds
from all this sorrow.

I’m at the local rescue every Tuesday. Building
monuments to you in every bowl of kibble.
I mop and launder their sour stench piss, hoping
to scrub away my own grief. Medicating
nomad infection, medicating my own
heartache. Calling every cat my honey,
my baby, every hour
spent there in holy remembrance.

At twenty-two, being an adult meant adopting you
into my life. Letting something impermanent and dependent
sink its claws into me.
But growing up is the life after
you. The future
always shifting. My new cat
stretches at your windowsill,
bathing in borrowed sunlight.

Hadley Dion is a writer and filmmaker from Los Angeles. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Scapegoat Review, FreezeRay Poetry, Nixes Mate Review, and more. She spends her extra time volunteering at her local cat rescue and crafting punch needle rugs. You can find more of her work at hadleydion.com.

Header image: This is my late cat, Bobbi, receiving her hundredth kiss of the day from me.