I happened across an autobiographical poem a friend of mine wrote. I didn’t read it carefully; actually I didn’t even read the whole thing. I’m not sure if it was the subject, the structure, or the language that made me stop, but it immediately started to claw at me like an angry cat against a closed door, growing hungrier and more desperate as days passed for whatever it knew was inside. I was in the room and I didn’t even know what it was, and I was certainly too afraid to ask, so I gave the book of poems to someone else. The cat stopped scratching, but still gives an annoyed meow once in a while.

“I like poetry, but I don’t”, I said to my girlfriend a few days later.
“You mean you don’t like writing it?”
“No, I like writing it too; I just don’t like…it.”
“So, you like the idea of poetry, but not poems themselves.”
“Yeah…that sounds pretty close.”

I haven’t seen the author of the poem since I read it, but I know I will soon and I’m not looking forward to it. The cat is still there, and it knows that any reminder of the poem will crack the door open a tad. I’m getting an anxiety attack just thinking about it. I will see them, and they will become young like they were in the poem, petrified so completely in a way only a child can be, unable to imagine alternatives. I will want to scream and shake and spit at them for stealing me back I don’t even know where, for skinning their feelings and forcing every innocent reader to throw salt…But I’ll probably just cut some Brie, and offer them a slice in forgiveness. Maybe someday, when the cat is sleeping, I’ll open the door. When it wakes up, I’m guessing it will stroll over and curl up to snooze by my head.