Oh, what, excuse me? You want me to love you?

I’ve got the usual world around me, and I’ve got this other softer, secret, sacred world around me, the one where I write. I deal with the outer world best I can, and I create in this inner world better, and then there’s you (said with disdain.)

You come flying down the hall, leap into my lap unexpectedly, push off my thigh with your claws and squeeze between the monitor and the desk cubby so you can sit at the window beyond so you can do whatever while I rub my thigh where the skin starts to swell and itch, that is how allergic I am to  you.  I wish you weren’t here.

You are currently sprawled across the left side of my desk, on papers, next to notebooks, calendars, and my dad’s journal.  You do the same thing all the time, your back feet pushing away my favored pictures and knickknacks so you can have more room.  You are Sphinx, paws before you, looking at me softly, saying nothing at all, but it is still a challenge, those green-yellow eyes and gray paws next to my keyboard your body saying “Touch me, stroke me, love me, I dare you.”  But I don’t touch you, you horrible gray thing who sits quietly on top of papers in my office that I did not invite.  If I touch you, you will think I like you, acquiesce to your need, you get what you want, just like everyone else who gets what they need from me just because they are near, they smile, they ask in a sweet way. Fuck you! Get off my fucking desk, I did not invite you into my world, my place, and I have to leave my office to hit the bathroom because it’s that early morning 18 cups of coffee thing I have to relieve, and when I come back you are still there but no longer looking at me but sprawled on your side on top of my papers.   At least I don’t have to touch your paws and make nice with you, but I still can’t stand the fact that you are here, leaving your hairs everywhere and the throb of your claws in my leg has not subsided.

You crawl on top of me in bed when I turn out the lights exhausted, between my legs, 20 pounds of you alighting on my bladder, abdomen, ribs, face, making your home in my hair and my pillow. You are not happy until you knead my head and hair for ten minutes, then you go back to the end of the bed where my feet should be, but I can’t sleep straight because you’re in the way.  You puke on my expensive quilt covered in seashells and starfish or shit on it because  you hate your litter box, and you expect me to love you and pet you and endure you and your 99 problems.

I suppose God has the same feelings as I do right now towards humanity.  I made you, you are in my life, you’ve got issues you needy things who tear each other apart and this world that I created and now you want me to love you? They look up towards me with their green-yellow eyes curled up on their sides immersed in bad dreams, hoping for solace in between the heartbeats of their lives, but no, I hate you, I am angry with the shit you leave all around, and I hate myself for the hate you make me feel in the morning when I should feel agape and speechless at the color of morning, and the birds and the memory of the stars I left behind.

How hard it is for me, this goddess, to love the things that hurt me every day (or the goddess who suffers the hurts you gave me these 18 and 20 years.)  I know for the most part they don’t mean to hurt me but they do.  How hard is it for me, this goddess, to return love and patience to creatures who don’t understand me.  Soft, gentle, needy beings, feline or human who deserve love, in all their imperfections.  Goddess, do you need to bend to love the imperfect things that love you, or is it enough to be, and accept those that love you alone.

Oh Goddess would it kill you to acquiesce, renounce anger, show compassion and stroke the grey cat who reclines on your papers and needs just a little bit of love; breathe and listen to those imperfect humans who inhabit your world and listen to them, be merciful and kind instead of offering them your harpy nature and hanging up on them?

Addendum:  1/5/2006.  I’ve made the effort to pet the cat in the morning as she’s curled up on the bed, or greet her with a pet at night when I come home.  There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Showing just a little love in a hateful world?  All it takes is one small act, one pebble tossed into the lake.