Misstep

In my dream, my cat came back
reborn as another cat, but one hind
quarter went bright with blood.

No one could help, and it cost
me critical time trying not to touch
or look since that leg seemed

slick from an inner slipping,
as if just bringing itself forward
or else back were enough to make

a vessel burst inside and now
there was no hiding the excess
harm. And this accident of its

birth seemed both lurid and sad,
as if it were a subset of my own
life, and was an overdose of love.

Laurinda Lind lives in New York’s North Country. Some publications/ acceptances are in Blue Earth Review, Comstock Review, Constellations, Paterson Literary Review, and Radius; also anthologies Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan (New Rivers Press) and AFTERMATH: Explorations of Loss and Grief (Radix Media). In 2018, she won first place in both the Keats-Shelley Prize for adult poetry and the New York State Fair poetry competition.