Living on Fire by Virginia Adair

Author:Virginia Adair [Adair, Virginia Hamilton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-55753-7
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2000-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Strays

It started with the cat, a hungry stray.

I fed her, and she made me let her stay.

Soon she was pregnant; and what could I do?

I didn’t want a cat and kittens too.

I put their box outside, just past their blindness,

and made a sign: These kittens need your kindness.

I had the females neutered, paying double,

to save the cat and me from further trouble.

A girl came by and knelt beside the box,

all gray: her jacket, jeans, and tennis socks.

She said, “To be unwanted is so sad.

I’d take one, but my father would be mad.

I fed a puppy once, outside.

My father came and kicked it till it died.

And then he threatened me because I cried.”

The kittens gone, a few days after that,

she came inside to pet the mother cat.

“I think she’s lonely.” But she said, “Oh, no,

mothers are glad to see their children go.”

Working all night and sleeping all the day,

I watched for June and wanted her to stay.

It looked like rain, one summer afternoon.

The girl looked sad, “I must be going soon.”

She laid her cheek against my jacket sleeve.

“You are my husband when I make believe.”

I would not do this trusting being harm,

but she turned woman in my circling arm.

She’d asked one time if I had wife and kids.

No, at that time my life was on the skids.

She said, “If I were yours, I’d never leave.”

I took her in my arms, “You mustn’t grieve.”

Flooding the darkened, swiftly emptied streets,

the threatening rain came down in heavy sheets.

I gave her only once a tiny pain:

the price of entry to our love’s domain.

We were two lonely persons, well aware

that hate and selfishness are everywhere.

I must have known it would be ending soon,

but for us both it meant a honeymoon.

Where is she now, her parents will not say.

For every inch of heaven, hell to pay;

does kindness always end in bars and chains?

In what we did was nothing cruel or dirty.

The social worker said, “The fact remains

that she was under twelve and you were thirty.”

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