Kira.

I’m kneeling on the ground beside your still body and crying.
Tossed into the gutter like some bit of rubbish, cast aside.
I want to hate the person who did this to you…burst every tyre
On the car that hit you and left you for dead.
I can’t know if it was quick/or if you suffered. Dead bodies don’t speak.

That person will never know the heartache behind the thump of collision.
May not (if I am honest), ever know it happened. I still hate you.
You would never know the silkiness of her fur, the white and almost blue
Of her coat. The striking blue eyes that captured the hearts of children everywhere.
The ones that stopped and tapped the window on their way to school.

What do I tell them? That cats need freedom as much as we do? I could not keep
her penned in when the sun shone and even more so with the depth of evening.
She needed that freedom. The chance to run with the wind and be as one with the night.
Don’t we all have that feeling inside? The raw escapism, the one who breathes the air?
The sleek body that was made to run, to go back to her roots before coming home.

I buried her in the garden, where she sunned herself on good days. I cried my depth of tears
Because she is gone from me. Never again to twine round my legs begging for food. Nor
Warming her body against mine when Winter’s chill made us conspirators.
She lived as she died, my friend, my companion against the darkness that will now leech
Into my soul, leaving behind only the warmth of her own sweet presence.

We have to love , but the hurting is hard to bear.

In Memory of Kira, 26/03/00 to 25/07/08.