your mother told us to get a male cat,
bring it to our house, so we will meet men
—an old and ridiculous superstition;
little, little did she know.
she told us never to get cats that are deaf or blind
because they won’t sense evil spirits,
who won’t let us sleep.
you’d never liked cats anyway—or dogs, or rats;
you weren’t fond of the animate, the unpredictable,
you loved the spicy smell of daffodils,
the color pink and ripe red berries; my blue eyes.
when you returned from a flea market,
you always brought three new china plates
for you and me, and the one who didn’t let us sleep.
she seeped through our keyhole at night,
like the pungent smell of coal;
broke a prepared fragile plate lying
on the wooden dining table
and attacked us in our sleep,
hissing, pushing, strangling.
she was a fat cat the color of graphite,
smelling like rancid and burnt bread.
you lay there paralyzed—between sleep and life,
eyes glistened with fear every time like the first time.
and when it’d been a year of our sleep-deprived life
at the edge of a forest that smelled of petrichor,
you asked me why she was torturing us
for the very first time.
I said that your mother was an evil witch
who craved our separation.
you cried and slapped my cheeks, saying you would leave me,
but then we found a doll with needles in her blue eyes.
you fell down on your knees, whispering that
your mother summoned the eerie cat—
malicious Kikimora in the cat’s fur.
we burned the doll in a blue flame behind the house
and kissed each other
on the lips.
