Waiting for a deceased friend’s cat to die
is almost unbearable. “This is where you live now,”
I explain. “Please stop crying.” But he is like a widower 
in some kind of holding pattern around a difficult truth. 
His head, his bearing, his movements are handsome to me, 
a kind of permanent elsewhere devoted to separation and death. 
“Please, let’s try to forget, dear. We need each other.” 
I feel I want to tell him something, but I don’t know what. 
So much that happens doesn’t make sense. Each night,