Tank

by Ben Fowlkes

There’s one cat left at my ex-wife’s house 

who still knows me. 

The others—and there

are several, multiplying rapidly ever since

I left—watch him nervously around corners,

the reckless way he sidles up to this stranger to brush

against his leg with faltering mews. 

And how could he tell them all the things he’s known me 

through? The mornings curled up on my chest as the sun

squeaked through bedroom blinds 

or the evenings warming in my lap 

as I conducted my life around him? 

They didn’t know him then, when he was a terror 

to birds and field mice, a lazy murderer, 

feathers in his beard and his thick black coat 

dotted with snow.

All they see is this frail old fellow sliding the husk 

of his body, light as a newspaper page,

against the leg of a man who lived here 

in some other life, now lost

like a dream that, upon waking, leaves

only the faint imprint of a feeling.