A Guilt Poem

Hello hello! I hope everyone is well. I’ve been pretty busy recently and, because it’s winter, not necessarily feeling like myself. It’s in these snow and ice-covered pauses in time that I wonder about moving somewhere warmer. Would I miss the seasons? It’s hard to imagine that the answer would be “yes,” as I believe that an appetite for the next season comes only from the undesirable weather extremes of the one preceding it. Winter is devastatingly cold and bleak, spring is windy and pollen-laden, summer is unbearably hot, and fall is perfect. Who knows?

One of my classes this semester is a poetry workshop. I’ve actually come to love poetry thus far, and it’s turning into a viable and artful way to express my feelings. (Imagine that?) I decided to write about my dead and deeply missed cat, Suri. The poem expresses some personal feelings and blame in regard to her early and untimely death. For background information, she died of a secondary infection from FIV, which she got from our other cat. Before she got sick, we had no idea he was positive. Alas, I’ve felt some pretty extreme feelings of guilt since her passing. The poem also mentions a tattoo, so I’ll add a picture of that for your reference. It was both devastating and a relief to finally start writing poetry about her, as she died about a year ago.

An Ode to ~~Suri~~

I tried to make light of your dying.
Will today finally be your day?
The body bag lurked at the apex
Of the closet, ready, at attention.
But some days you were stronger, and
I allowed myself to breathe. In the end
These days were the most painful–
Eyes bright and attentive, just playful enough
To hide
The tremor of your muscles and
The heat of your blood, fighting,
Losing a predetermined battle.
I knew not to allow you
A soft refuge under the covers. It
Only over-heated your already
Burning body. But how could I
Say no
When I never knew which torturous day
You would go?
Yet when you did die, it was unexpected.
I asked the vet for one more day,
One last forbidden cuddle,
And she asked me not to be so cruel.
So that day, you died.
In remembrance of you I
Got a tattoo. You were artfully rendered, an
Exact likeness. You get compliments
More than any part of me. And
Yet, I wonder if etching you forever
On my rotting tomb was just a
New form of self-harm.
You’d probably laugh, tell me that
I’m crazy, goofy, over-thinking, insane.
But what you don’t know is that
It is
My fault.
Now I’ve created a ghost of you
To remind myself of my own failures,
A caricature to the celebration of your life.
A ghost of you makes a
Ghost of me, all in the name
Of memorial art.