Stray Cat

The night delivered him, a shadowed question,  

fur tangled in constellations of dirt and sorrow.  

He moved like a ghost, half-believing himself real,  

half-hoping someone else might prove it.  

One ear torn, a war he would not name,  

mud streaks like badges of indifferent chaos.  

His eyes burned, cleaved open with hunger,  

a flame so low only the wind could find it.  

I wondered where the moon had left him,  

what gutters or grief had shaped his spine  

into something both broken and braced  

against the weight of being forgotten.  

He didn’t ask to be seen, not fully—  

just enough to be deemed worth a bowl,  

worth the hushed whisper of an open door,  

worth the chance that kindness could still fit.  

I crouched low, palms up,  

and the porchlight hummed our secret song,  

soft, steady, and achingly slow,  

until he stepped closer: a fragile trust.  

Some creatures carry storms on their backs,  

some wear survival like a second skin.