the cat

one day he was old.

i did not want him to be; last week he was
in his prime
a few days ago he was as he had ever been and then
one day, he was old

and sick, and staggering, and i
was his only friend
when he looked at me with uncomprehending and
unquestioning eyes

i would have given much, and much
of what i had and what i did not have
to have answered that trust with
yes

yes we will fix this
yes you will be whole
again, and happy, and as you were once
last week
yes i can move mountains and shift the universe and
change the immutable laws of time and change

and what i said was, yes
i am human and
i am fallible and
yes, what i would do if only i could do is irrelevant and
what i can do is see that there is no more pain
or imbalance or
uncertainty

and i will tell myself the lie that everything is better this way
when there is no possibility of it being better in any way
when
i will only ever see him again
as someone just about to come around the corner
as someone who just left the room

51064

I actually got through NaNoWriMo in one piece. Admittedly, it was a fried and frazzled piece by November 30 (some of which in all fairness does not have a thing to do with trying to write fifty thousand words in thirty days. But still.)

I also learned that I can churn out an incredible amount of verbiage in a very short period of time. Because I wrote those 51064 words in seventeen days. I started out all right, put in a few hundred words here and there, and then life interfered, and then before I knew it twelve days had gone by where I hadn't written anything. Not a single solitary much maligned word.

Whereupon I learned that I get quite grouchy when I feel like I'm under pressure. Note to self: NaNoWriMo 2008 -- get it done in the first 17 days and then put your feet up. At least one of my NaNo buddies managed this and there were a couple of others who weren't too terribly far behind. And they were busy. Like, painting boats and starring in plays busy.

In a funny sort of way I owe those words to the ones that didn't make it. Several writing buddies had to stop their challenge mid-way through because real life intruded in very adamant, much-more-serious-than-writing ways -- and then it became sort of a personal, I have to do this for those who could not carry on thing. Granted, the words that I wrote are inelegant and many of them are destined for the compost heap but a few are likely going to make it into the finished project. After all, "...the rumors that he had been circumcised with a fish knife had never been substantiated...." have a certain ring to them, don't you think?