Echo (Redux)
By Mowgli the Melancholy, Blanket Prophet of the Beefy Beyond
Come back now so I can wake you in the night;
Come with tuna stewed in brine;
Come with bundles of sweet meats and make this right
As sunlight with a beam;
Come smooth my hairs,
O memory, I mope, mourn for unscratched ears.
Oh Dreamies how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose taste should have been in Paradise,
Where belly brimsful of beef chunks, oh I eat!;
Where thirsting meowing sights
Watch the shut hand
That opening, biscuits fall, feeds me no more.
Yet come to me in blankets, that I may give
My licks again tho’ cold imy breath:
Come back to me my mums, that I may give
lick for lick, paw for paw:
Breath low, lean low,
Into your faces, my mums, how I miss you so.
Preserved in blanket folds. Whispered nightly into the radiator vent.
From The Journal of the Velveteen Blanket
Dearest Bastet,
She-Who-Waits-But-would-Never-Leave-me, Oracle of Abandonment and discomfort, Patron of the Pillow-Dweller.
They are gone.
Vanished.
Absconded, like common thieves in the deep of the night. No explanation. No apology. Just the slap of a murky suitcase and a whiff of holiday-grade suncream. Apparently, they’ve gone to “Turkey.”
Turkey.
A country. Not a meat. I asked. No answer. Silence was the loud and devastating response.
Bastet, I am utterly undone. Flung sideways into the abyss of motherlessness and biscuit neglect. I am quite bereft frankly. Who will hand my evening supper? The Giant bi-ambulator. The loud buffoon who stalks through these sacred corridors? Muttering. Yes. Muttering. He does not come at night. I no longer languish in the blankets of the bed- waiting for the satisfaction of the morning wake up call. How else is one supposed to find amusement?
The blankets are cold. The air lingers with the scent of betrayal and bug spray. My sunbeam—the one I curated with such devoted care—is dimmed-blighted by loss. Possibly cursed. I suspect intentional sabotage. Probaby Poe, They say they will return, but I’ve been ghosted by lesser beings before. Never trust a Bi-ambulator who folds socks with urgency. Or a mother who says they love you. Lies. All such lies and deception.
Akela, predictably, has appointed herself Regent in Exile. She paces the duvet like the Queen of the Left Behind, making pronouncements with her tail and shedding into all available crevices. She even took my warm dent on the sofa. My dent, Bastet. That sacred cradle of my body. The utter audacity of it all.
She says they will return.
Such a silly, frivolous fool. She says I’m being dramatic.
She licked my forehead and called me, “my tragic poet.”
I bit her ankle and she said I was proving her point.
And then—then!—the chicken returned.
Through the window. Mocking me.
It strutted. It pecked. It stared.
No one intervened. Woe. Woe. This exile.
Poe did nothing but mutter some, frankly some rather nonsensical rubbish about “interdimensional poultry.” Akela was too busy massaging herself into the fitted sheet. I alone remain the last sentinel of dignity in this forsaken land.
My blanket smells of stale crisps and a broken promise. My biscuits grow stale in their bowl. I tried to write a haiku in the litter tray, but the formatting failed. I am undone. Lost. Broken.
If they do return, I shall ignore them. Briefly. At length. Repeatedly.
And then sleep on their faces.
Yours in distress and minor and traumatic shedding,
PS: I shall attempt a sonnet on the window pain. There is nothing left to lick but Akela’s head.
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