Mercy & Honor

I have a gift
but I still can't see you.
Cataracts.
We can't see you.

I know someone who can.
He is an outsider like you and he says that you will not be okay.

Do I keep my pen until it is done fading?
I grow impatient and throw it away.

Peaches
Fruit gets soft
I look away and throw it on the ground to get crushed by a car.
A coup de grace; salvation from mealy fruit.

Salvation from an old dog.

Mercy killings,
Honor killings.

Same.
Run in front of a car and receive grace instead of hatred.

The cat singing my praises needs to die.
Perhaps he wants to die.
He longs for attention,
Epicentric attention.

One day I will let him out into the wilderness and never let him back in.
No grace.
I will have stolen my peace back.

Except maybe it never belonged to either of us.

I thought I would never want anything to die
But now I feed poison to the forests underground,
to the ancient buried forests.

Now I have a cemetery of twenty-seven cats who wanted to come back.
They didn't understand
so I let the trash take itself out
live in cardboard boxes
and die.

A coup de grace

A mercy killing
An honor killing.

You will not be okay.
I know, because he told me.
And you will never understand.

You think it's unfair.
I was attached for so long.

I used to feel bad for the mealy fruit, and eat it anyway, quickly.
My body would not know the difference.
But it did.

It is better to look away and throw them to the ground.