Cat Lady

I don’t edit myself like others might.

I don’t keep words tucked behind my canines

Knowing that if I’m too overbearing

People will run.

I figure,

That if I love someone enough to be honest with them,

The real me shouldn’t make them run.

But sometimes they do.

Okay,

More often than not they do.

Because I’ve got a brain that runs on repeat.

Replaying and replaying nostalgic slideshows of the good times.

The times I wasn’t alone and aching.

So when I am alone and aching?

I tend to reach out

I tend to reach out with fingers like vice grips

Pulling and tugging any strings I can find.

Holding people close

When they are the slinky black cats of half formed friends.

Trying to claw their way out of my reach.

I’ve got scars from the ones who scratched me.

Who ran yowling into the night.

I just let them go.

I learned at a young age

Never to chase black cats down the alleyways.

But its never stopped my heart from beating.

Never stopped me from loving.

I just tug at the strings I have left.

Hold the friends I have left even closer.

Because I am a visual person

And I don’t want a single friend to forget that I love them.

Because I had one

I had one who did and it broke my heart.

And I’ve been pulling at these people ever since.

So sometimes

When I can’t see the love those friends are sending back

I feel like they’ve all left me.

The cat lady with nothing left but used kitty litter and scars.

I have  trouble remembering

That not everybody works like me.

I know I have friends.

Friends who don’t mind the overbearing

Who don’t mind the words spit out

Like sunflower seeds at summer baseball games.

Friends who are the alleyway cats

With scratched out eyes and bitten ears.

They may not purr and sit in my lap

But that doesn’t mean they don’t love me.

That doesn’t mean all these overbearing friendly halloos

All these tugs on strings with vice grip fingers

Were for nothing.

It just means

I need to buy more cat food.