own everything

Look upon the fields. This is where you'll lie. Summer is a time of rest and irresponsibility. Who has loved has loved, who has not has wanted. I find myself lost in all the things that will not matter once my life is at an end. It seems that mundane deadlines are attracted to the light of leisure, and they swarm like moths, leaving my face covered in powdery scales. The light on the back porch is out. A frail form darts beneath the deck. It is a cat.

The cats must be reincarnates, they respawn every so often. Usually just after I've decided to take the animal into our home, they disappear. This time, as I was deciding to build a refuge for her in the garage, another cat peeked through the hedges and made it known that this place, my home, the one for which I pay the mortgage, belongs in fact to a neighborhood bully. I fucking hate cats, and, of course, I adore them, I just don't know how to reconcile this relationship. So I grabbed the stray, rescuing her from an imminent attack, probably violating her constitutional rights of non-molestation in the process, but a life saved is a liberty lost. Now choose, motherfucker.

I am watching a movie with my wife. She and the kids have brought me a shit ton of my favorite beer. It is not fair that I should have so much, when so few cats have so litter. Except for the neighborhood tom who in fact owns my home. And when I say litter I mean little. Meow.

The conversation turns to old loves. I guess the correct term would be former loves, but it's been so long that old works, too. The old in this country will always work, we are so forlorn and industrious. She tells me the name of the first boy she ever loved, and I ask her if she knows what has become of the old rogue. She doesn't know, so I pull him up on Facebook and accidentally send him a friend request. She is mortified, but not nearly mortified enough to my liking. I will never understand how inept she is at social media, and that's saying a lot given I've just accidentally befriended a rival from the distant past.

As a child of the 80s I would never dream it's over, I would never forget about you, I would never not want you, baby. But I would wonder how much better off she and all the strays and all the kids and all the beers in the world might have been if don't had been a part of my vocabulary. Waste not, won't not. The stray has now been with us a week, and I love her, truly with my heart love her, like I love everything, badly, which is how I own everything, including my house and my past and my responsibilities.