He comes to me sometimes.
Every now and then, a tap on my shoulder,
a whisper through the door.
I remember watching the light dim in a cat’s eyes,
smoothing his fur one last time, and turning to him.
“Did he feel pain? Does he forgive me?”
And he merely smiles, and turns away.
He always had the answers. I held all the questions.
I have given him gifts through the years,
blessed him with my children, cried with my flowers.
But in the end, though the children grew old in his arms,
and the flowers faded to dust in his hands,
in the end he received them all, tokens of my love
in the many small and broken things.
That life has always loved death, for the beauty of the temporary,
the mortal, and forgotten. In his arms, forever, eternal.