by Wende Crow

One night she appears at the gate in front of my apartment. Round yellow eyes glinting in the streetlight, two little lanterns of curiosity and longing. She rubs her thin body against the bars. I kneel down and reach out my hand and she meets it with the top of her head and closes her eyes and begins to purr.

I see her again and again, always at the gate, inside of which my neighbors upstairs have set out a dish of dry food and another of water—she is homeless, a stray. Everyone in the building loves her and wants her to be fatter, but no one wants to keep her. Not acknowledging that this kindness of feeding her will make her stay here, make her believe this building is home. I know not to feed her, for she will be mine if I do. This chaos, this noise, this expensive city to which I have just moved, this small apartment with cheap brown carpet, these are mine. I don’t know how even this much can belong to me. How I will keep them. How I will keep myself. How I would keep another creature.

But then coming home one night I round the corner from the avenue where the subway stops and she comes mewling up the street, having sensed me from half a block away in the dark. I put my bags down on the stoop and sit with her, stroking her gray and white neck, and she purrs and falls asleep in my lap. My thoughts move from the panic and noise of the day to her, to the steady magic motor in her throat. I leave her on the stoop and go upstairs to decide not to decide yet. To hope someone else will take her in.

The cocaine addict downstairs tries and fails to do so. She provides her food, but not a litter pan. The cat paces up and down the addict’s bed for an hour before finally releasing her bowels on the pillow. Right next to her face. The addict throws her out in the cold again. She tells me about this as we stand at the gate watching the cat eat from the dish the neighbors upstairs have set out for her again. She fails and I have been afraid I might fail. But this creature. She looks up at me and mewls and I know: this much can belong and be fed. I look at her and she knows. This much I can do, this is how I will keep myself. And the next night I buy her food and a litter pan and I feed her and she is mine.

She is inside with me and walking around on this cheap brown carpet. This much is mine. She and I keep these things, together. And she eats from her dish and drinks from her bowl in the kitchen. She spreads one forepaw to lick the crevices between the five toes and all around them, then places it on the floor and lifts the other paw. Sleeps at my side. She washes herself then jumps up to the back of the couch and licks the top of my head as I read. She dreams of running and twitches her whiskers. And when it snows I open the window out to the fire escape for her. She dips her paw in the snow and then shakes it wildly, the cold white fluff flying. She is lit from inside.

In the evening she watches me open the door and come in from work. She stands and stares at me in the kitchen. My crumbs fall in memorable patterns and she puts her nose to the floor to inspect them. She wreathes her body in circles around my shins, and then she runs to the bed and rolls around in the pile of freshly laundered towels. When I rub her she is electric and the sound she makes is electric and she closes her eyes and stretches and rolls her head back and chatters. We make little ceremonies that keep me. She grows fatter every day and sleeps wrapped tight around herself.

She sits in the sun on the windowsill and watches the leaves move around on the ground below. She chatters at birds. Never needing me to see her do this. She looks at me when I walk in out of a salty rain, close the door on a bewildering city. This much can belong to me. Mine, she says. I feed her and she is mine.

Wende Crow lives in Atlanta, where she teaches computer literacy to refugees. Her poems and essays have appeared in New Haven Review, Ploughshares, The Bakery, and other journals.

We are proud to introduce a new feature: The Inquisitive Eater Poet of the Month.  Each month a contemporary poet will present three poems and one personal essay in which food is consumed, passed over, or reckoned with.  Wende is our inaugural poet.