Life, Sliced

Have you ever opened a shut dresser drawer to find a living thing taking a nap, now perturbed for the intrusion of its catfort?  I scared the jeebus out of myself more than the little cat, who earlier had crawled into the middle drawer while I folded clothing.  Fine, check the drawer, no cat, shut it, go on to the next event.  Hours ago.

Now it was nighttime, and I wanted my pillow after a day of intensive cleaning and hauling things such as the television to the trash room.  Toddled into the bedroom and thought, say, instead of the usual t-shirt why don't I put on a pair of real pajamas?  Like regular people do.  I pulled the bottom drawer open and there, stretched out in a long sausage of cat fur, was Kai.  Totally knocked out and very warm from the closed in cave she had flipped into.  This feline Houdini must have squirmed into the lower drawer while the upper was half-open, and thank all gods she didn't lose her tail when the thing was shut closed.  By me.  

I jumped, and I am sure the neighbors heard me yelp, almost as much as even earlier in the day with a different drawer in the Same Dresser.  Digging through the sock drawer, I found a medium-sized black plastic box.  What the hell is this?  I save all sorts of things for grandiose, waste-not usage, and this summer was filled with crises and confusions, so some of my memory is wandering down the street after escaping the attendant cerebellum.  What the h--GOOD GOD, IT'S MY MOTHER!!!  I totally forgot that I placed her ashes there after keeping them in a cupboard next to the Harvest Spice melty wax tablets you put in a candle potpourri.  Dad, when alive, kept her on top of the tv with a note taped to the box, as if anyone had a question.  

Someday she'll be interred, I loved her more than more, but I don't want her here.  I guess I thought the dresser, which originally had been hers, was more appropriate even amid socks.  Dorothy Mae.  I told her that I was sorry to forget that she was put there, and pushed the container more to the back, next to an ancient photo album of her and her family when she was four.  She's okay with it, she'd let me know; however, the dresser is out to get me.  I am not opening it again for awhile, excuse me please if I wear the same clothes three days in a row.  Cats and ashes.  No wonder I take meds.  

Dusk stayed beyond its boundaries this evening, holding the sky in a translucent deep blue until half past six.  Spring is a month off, and even though winter has been milder than usual, it will be good to see green shoots pushing towards sun and sky.  One more chore before I can sit and think of things to make with paper, pencil, sticks of color; darker pigments become an evening sky behind human shapes, allowing skin to glow as if it were lit by fire inside, emotions arcing across the map of night.  Meteor showers forecast; incandescent minerals, heated and arrow true.   Good night.