Cats Can

Cats Can

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You’re feeling silly, but someone said
that cats
can see ghosts.
 
So you go to the door
with a saucer of milk,
and just then the ghost wakes up
 
from a deep sleep
and bleeds a little
into the sink.
 
Or not the sink, but a bed,
or rather a head now held up by a bed.
Or whatever. It doesn’t matter.
 
Choosing your words carefully
makes no difference
to a cat or a ghost.
 
Look at your backyard.
Does the grass care what the frost heave thinks?
Contour is all,
 
even when hidden.
The loose overburden
covering a buried cavity
 
is delicately balanced. When runoff-
storage ponds seep
into the folds
 
of the brain,
the additional weight
can trigger a collapse
 
called a sinkhole,
where ghosts bleed into the cracks.
Cats can see it.

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