Let’s say I keep a tidy kitchen. I like to think that my things are in the kitchen.
* * *
Let’s say we live in a single room. The cat is always at our feet. We live in a single room, so we can’t help but be near.
* * *
Let’s say he puts his hands on me when I’m trying to whisk the eggs, when I’m pulling something creative from inside of me and he is at my skin.
* * *
Let’s say he tells me when I misspell omelet in a text message.
He’s been saying this kind of thing for a while: He loves the way I fold the napkin, but not the way I fold down the sheets.
* * *
In the shower, he drips on my forehead. The sheen of him transferred on to me, where I can’t see. The cat meows from the other side of the shower curtain.
* * *
Let’s say he swallows hard at the smiley-face I penned at the top of his napkin. Dots and lines that don’t meet, drawn with a marker called permanent.
* * *
Let’s say I read with the next page held up, ready to turn.
* * *
One more thing before you go, he says, walking away from me.
* * *
Saturday is the indentation of his stomach. The blot of the cat’s black paw print on his shin. He doesn’t eat. He doesn’t stop eating.
* * *
His hand circles softly around the cat’s paw. His hand encircles the cat’s paw. He sleeps for long hours with his eyes blotted out.
* * *
The road doesn’t stop me. The road under foot shouldn’t be thought of, yet I am thinking of the road. And the sign I pass that announces a lost cat.
Janelle Adsit’s poetry, book reviews, and essays appear in publications such as Confrontation, Caketrain, Mid-American Review, Colorado Review, and ForeWord. She is a doctoral candidate at SUNY Albany where she teaches creative writing.