Dream Poem about my former cat

I wrote this poem as I woke up this morning while half-asleep,
my mind hop-scotching between dream and consciousness.

Love Anxiety

A shape - the body - moved.
That's how you know it's not something else.

My cat's ghost lounging on my rear
hood squints happily against the sun.

                               She used to scale
the basement wall with one brave,
gathered leap. I wonder how much it
hurt her claws to dig against the
painted concrete.

She hissed as a last defense, then
broke into a single meow, scared and
pitiful. She was my only victim. I loved her.

I viewed the cliff-side inlet from on high
out a hotel window. The translucent waters
could not conceal its store of green corals.
A pelvic socket carved out of the mountain.

I see the past in dreams and let
familiar emotions steer my visit.
I know where memories belong.
I acquire new memories in
reproduction of those that belong.

Life is not about ignoring your own
objections. We go where our past
teaches. In our memories we all
belong.

I wonder how arthritic and weak her
claws were as she neared her end.
What former refuge she sought, she
could no longer climb.

But safety was in her head... from a
danger that never existed. How she
climbed, digging her claws
desperately for life! Then in the end,
when her legs and paws weakened,
in skittish isolation... she died.

"Where were you to frighten me?"

                                                   She
must've wondered in those dark,
hollow nights when the only
alarming sounds echoed from distant
chambers of the house. Not
precursors to a capture and a hug.
A pinning under warm, breathing
blankets. Hot smothers against my
chest. The unresolved fear must have
killed her.

"Why does the blow not fall upon
me? What is it doing... what unknown
dangers are conspiring?"

But none came. I was not there.

The weekends I'd return to terrorize
her became less common. To replace
the unknown fear with a familiar one,
and alleviate her terror.

When I returned, she looked at me
with round wet eyes and released
three months of fear with her long
pitiful wail, so much less could it be
called a meow. All this, after I broke
her frightened hiss.

There she sits now on my car trunk,
curled up napping, stretched out like a mink,
yawning with big teeth, stretching
her arms and legs with extended claws,
shaking her ears and licking her inner
thigh. She knows I cannot hurt her now
she is a ghost. She is no longer afraid.

---

comments:

The dreamlike quality of the writing process explains why the scenes in the beginning are not really connected by content, but rather by their feel. The first line, although it appears to describe my cat, is totally unrelated. I suspect its actually about a passerby discovering me while I'm sleeping.

That initial sentence was running through my head, over and over again as I was dreaming, and I simply wrote it down so I wouldn't forget it. I wanted to understand what was its meaning to my subconscious - the second line describes somewhat the connotation of that sentence, although such a description was not explicit in my dream.

I didn't know I would write anything beyond the first line. The rest flowed out as I alternately dreamed and sketched my dream in sentences. I could reorganize it into something legit, but I like to keep it the way it is.

I'm not satisfied with the title. What I wanted to do was to play around the idea that my cat's irrational fear complex made her perceive every sound and everyone as a danger and a threat, even the one person - the only person - who really cared for her. The poem gives the impression that there actually was abuse going on - I think I wrote too much from the frightened perspective of the cat - and the title might lead to that false impression.