Goodbye as Hello

As I scooped the litter box, Rafiki stood on my windowsill, gazing down upon me in both illness and vigilance, waiting. I cried as I scooped, making every promise that I would be the dad he deserved and that he would have clean litter every day — promises unkeepable but made knowing that, were the universe to create some chains that did tie me to that burden, that I would hold it, groaning but grinning.  

The fullness of the moment’s silence struck me through the sound of the clay granules shifting under plastic scoop. It was 3 AM and I was alone.

I called down the hall. “Hey Google. Play music.”

What came next is something of a mystery to me. Opening Spotify on my phone yielded a fresh, paused moment. Nothing playing. And yet Google said, “Playing Spotify.” Music began to hum from the speaker while my phone remained paused. I had to Shazam the songs to create the playlist below -- where it was residing before that, what data the speaker referenced to build the playlist, will remain indefinitely unknown.

This music would become the soundtrack to this writing, to my evening of casting spells, to my grief about our precious boy, early into the breaking of the dawn.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5wxsze73zTv7kD3hh96AeG?si=Bh2VgGPBQ-6jZSekaZ1Mhg&pi=u-WbZQmnixRUqz 

------

crawling, ever so

To love with such abandon

That every tiptoe

Becomes its own ballet

In white mittens 

Stalking touch

Corralling it 

With dire calls 

Each shout its own 

pulse of gravity

That pulls heartstrings

Inside hands

That tells a story 

For someone else to end

With oxytocin punctuation

Gladly, though truthfully

Never settled

for very long

To be a soft factory

Of precious contact

Is to have smokestacks

That billow respite

and stardust