October 1, 2024

Note: This week’s writing is inspired by Ross Gay’s wonderful prose poem “Throwing Children.”

hold

And here it is morning again, and despite the earnest attempts at keeping the cat from waking you up in the middle of the night the cat woke you up in the middle of the night and not just once and the second time was worse because the second time it was because the cat was puking loudly in some part of the room you couldn’t see on account of the darkness which meant at some point when you actually got out of bed there was a chance you might accidentally step in the puke pile because you wouldn’t have had your contacts in so you were lying there wondering where in the room you might avoid stepping when you got up to get your coffee which was still a couple of hours away and that’s what you’re thinking of right now with the coffee finally in your hands because you’re thinking of how it used to be before cats and maybe before whatever came before cats and how there is still this part of you that clings to that before and a lot of other befores and how in the middle of the night when the cat is walking on your face or puking in some part of the room you don’t know you travel back to some other time when you could see your entire apartment no matter where you stood and how while on some days that felt kind of a puny because it wasn’t a big apartment and add to that those sad grey kitchen cabinets and how expensive it was to live in the city and how in the afternoons it got so foggy and cold you almost couldn’t see out the windows but even then it was a kind of comfort this way of living which is to say you knew where the edges were around you and it felt like a kind of life preserver the walls you’d painted dark blue and the off-white carpeting that you’d make zigzags on with the vacuum and the 23 stairs you climbed to get from out there to in here and how the arrival always felt like you’d survived something even though those last few months were kind of awful and you knew it was time to leave but weren’t sure where to go or what you wanted to do once you got there but you understood how the smallness of that space had kept you safe for a little which is to say you recognized you were outgrowing something that wasn’t growing with you and that couldn’t grow with you which is what you are thinking about now this morning with the coffee and the cats and which is maybe something that’s always a little at the edge of your thinking this thing about growth this itch you carry this looking around at the walls and the floor and asking yourself is this big enough is this big enough to hold me.