The Objections of Cats

I tell this woman

In her office consciously constructed to feel

Familiar and comfortable to hide

The clinic in her mind

I tell this woman

“I don't resent my parents. My mother did her best-

It was no different from any other childhood,

Where I grew up”

Still, She is disturbed by my stories of discipline

By the lightness in which I tell them

“I was punished when deserving”

I explain, to this gentle white woman

Who has lived a clean and soft life

I try to coat leather lash stories in cotton wool

Swaddle tree branch beatings in silk

To ease her distress

“It hasn't affected me” I console her

My words pat her on the hand and

Shoo her protests like stray cats

But

She objects just once more

“Don't you think, as a child-

Knowing that the person who loves you most

Can hurt you most,

Could scare you most

might have had an impact

On the formation

Of your understanding

Of what it is to love”

Her protest cat-curled in my mind

I think on the men I have loved

I think of the hands they have placed on me

Leaving dark oceans on my skin

I think on the things they have screamed at me

That live on, bouncing in the echo chamber of my mind

And the way I stayed and stayed and stayed

I think on the men I have loved

And how I forgave them all

Because they only punished me

When I was deserving

I think on the men I have loved

And quietly lay a bowl of milk

So that the stray cats may drink