28.09.2002
feeling kinda
my little baby girl has been part of my life for so long that i can't imagine how life will be without her. how is it that she won't be sitting behind my left shoulder, purring into my ear as we watch TV together? how is it that she won't be sitting on the other side of the kitchen, watching while i clean out the litter box? and she won't walk over when i'm done to inspect, then pee her approval in just that one corner.
she isn't here to pest me while i'm trying to read in bed. for some reason, she got into the habit the last few months of needing to jump over me, from one side to the other, *right behind* whatever i was reading. she didn't want pets. she just wanted to interrupt. i don't know why. but i wish she'd do it again.
i'm loathe to dust or do laundry, and not for the usual reasons. no, i don't want to do that because there are little bits of grey fur on the end of my blanket, tumbleweeds of it in stray corners, and i feel like cleaning all that up makes her go away all over again.
i know. it's not as if she can be more gone than she is. but somehow it feels... unfaithful. i still want those little reminders, at least for a bit.
when i got home tonight, i dropped my bag by the kitchen table. not sure why, as i nearly always leave it by the door. but for some reason, it ended up by the table. and i kept catching it out of the corner of my eye. i thought it was stanz. that must have happened a half dozen times before i finally had to move the bag, because i couldn't take my heart breaking just a little bit more each time i made that mistake.
and it wasn't a mistake really, it was years of sense memory. stanz would sit under the table, between the chair legs, watching. years of knowing to look before pulling out the chair, or before i swabbed a mop under there... sense memories stay with us for a long time. they're written into the bones. a single scent can put you back 15 years in the blink of an eye.
i blink.
she's still not there.
