Shelter-Cat
The neighbour’s ancient shelter-cat hobbles
for a drink at dawn—a shaggy muff with one eye
and half a tail. She drinks from the shallow pool
that my mother poured in the backyard one sojourn.
She walks as if through quagmire, at the edge
of eternal sleep, passed a bed of cherry tomatoes
ripe with time. A careless hive of hanging red heads
ready to be picked, bathed, cut, and swallowed.
In the yard is an antique mirror that stonewalls
the shelter-cat; her wise amber eye travels her form:
a mild garden of histories seaming over scar tissue
and patchwork fur—stories of survival in the flotsam.
You see her thread the space like a dream, a brittle body
without a shadow, a mystical relic which swings
between life and a rumour, the lone ghost in my yard,
her head bent over the precipice, witless with thirst.
Breakfast’s ready! My mother sighs, hunched deep
carrying a modest feast on her back, a swelling cloud
of downpour, in the columns of her spine, to feed
and empty, a smile that no longer spreads to the eyes.
A gaunt woman with string, tethering kites to children,
thread she pulls from a withering nightdress, uncovering
why a harsh wind sings in the narrow gullet—reminds us
what happened to our bodies. Dizzy in the noise
I try to hold her hand, white in her eyes, prayer entwined,
while stray in the pool is a floating grey matt in the blue.
Saif Sidari is a transnational writer from Palestine. He recently graduated from the University of Sussex with an MA in Creative and Critical Writing, where he wrote a dissertation on queer shame and notions of body and manhood in James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room. His work has appeared in Blink-Ink and Eunoia Review. You can find him on Instagram @saif.sidari.