LatinosUSA

The book I have in my lap, that I move to the desk, that the cat insists upon following and butting gently with its head, enough to make the words sway, fragment, and fall beyond reading, this series of scribbled glyphs cannot possibly say anything to this gray tabby, other than attend to me, attend the softness of my fur, stroke my purring with another slow hand down my back, rub just above my eyebrows, don’t forget to slowly work the edges of my ears between the pads of your thumb and index finger, this is the story the cat wants to hear, as it drools with pleasure and a drop of saliva falls onto the top of a page, puckering a widening circle as it is absorbed, leaving the slightest stain, residue of a virulent fluid that once infected me when it savaged my hand, once when it was wild and soon after it had been trapped, a saliva that contains bacteria found in the mouths of Komodo dragons, who bite their prey and then lumber after them for four days until they are too weak from infection to resist being eaten, and now this furry little dragon wants little to do with its old life, though it sits staring out the window with a longing that I understand as I run my fingers through its soft coat, pick-pocketing affection.  

Perhaps this book will survive the both of us, paper tougher than flesh, though the book helpless to ward off the infections of dust and mildew, what any secluded room has to offer before the quaking and flooding,  fires and assorted conflagrations, or more simply the move to discard, that these words were at most an entertainment, a dalliance, a tale, an allegory to keep the mind turning through time, to unsettle the dust, but a hundred years from now, if there is a reader who knows, who remembers this language, if they should randomly turn the page and see this faint circle of wavy paper where a cat once happily lulled and expressed itself, what will he or she think, that a century past someone held a nightcap, a bourbon and water on a humid night, the glass streaked with condensation and confession, and balanced over this page, dripped, that this was one way to get through to morning, or might the reader see a moment of overwhelming grief, mainlining some loss rekindled by these lines, or would a cat be considered that affectionately drooled once one afternoon upon this page.