My mother was school teacher

but she never taught me much

about boys. She insisted I would marry

in the church and otherwise left me

to my own broken devices.

Now, studies have shown that little girls grow up

to go for men who take after their fathers, so

of course, I fell for the first charming thief

that I met on the street. I was tired

of running my lines and wearing disguises.

Greg was unrepentant, defiant, a runaway

from a boarding reform school in Georgia. 

He looked like home to me—a pair of designer

blue jeans, turned inside-out to reveal

their dirty inseams. He pulled a pill

from his pocket. I swallowed. It helped me

forget. I petted his head, and he followed me

home to my dormitory. He was the first boy

that slept in my bed. He gave me a moonstone

and read to me from an illuminated book of poems

that he stole. I cut class that semester,

and Greg schooled me in everything:

how to mark your territory, how the art

of deception depends on consent.

He was always working an angle: his voice

stretched thin and fine, his face

inclined further and further away

as I leaned in to kiss him.

Yes, he was using me, but I too was generous

with my cruelty. I once struck his cheek

with the flat of my palm because

I did not like what I saw in his eyes:

a wild animal, in the cage of my arms.

He went out one night and he never came back.

A thread of his hair still on the pillow. His shoes

in the back of the closet. I locked myself up

with the smell of his things and didn’t come out

until I could blow perfect smoke rings.

The year after Greg disappeared into the ether

I kept a smart alley cat called Sebastian

in a college apartment with a school boy

named Adam. When the cat ran away,

Adam was saddened, but I had expected it.

I may have failed Intro to Critical Theory

but I had learned this lesson already:

the more human an animal, the less

she will deign to be kept as a pet. 

Copyright 2016 | Pet Murmur