Version 3, Discarded. Please compare. |
No one had taken it. Not for a while. It- was a walk, a short walk, less than a minute, less than thirty seconds. "No one wants to come here," I was told. He was the only one willing to bring me and it was difficult. He hadn’t taken the walk either. As we opened the gate, we were greeted by dogs and cats, eager to see someone, anyone. No one had fed them in days, a week, perhaps, maybe more. As a cat rubbed against my leg, it was inescapable but to lean over and utterly dreadful to touch it. They were starving and they cried and cried and cried and kept crying. They were dying. I looked around. Where you were. Where they found you. And then we left. No one had looked for you for days. I wanted to sleep, but we stayed. I remembered the smell of moth balls from Grandma’s trailer when I was so much younger. An endless moment, this moment that I sat and looked at the place he pointed to; bottomless, brutally fused, tormented between then and now and before. We walked back down the driveway, to cousin's trailer, where everyone gathered and grieved and mourned. We walked in silence. Next to his trailer sat your trailer, abandoned for years, once called home, now jacked up on cinder blocks, leaning unsafely, discarded, like trash. Stray cats, neighborhood cats, your cats; They assumed your home as their dwelling, a place they could rest and be safe to live; and they claimed it as their own. The smell left behind seeped into my skin, wrapping me in remorse as I rummaged your belongings, searching for a letter somewhere in a box among boxes as I sat alone; unable to tolerate the smell, incapable of moving. In time, I couldn’t tell the difference between the heavy odor of cat and the feel of humidity; the sweat against my skin, or tears. |