Sonnet, by Lilah Katcher

In windows behind the night glass
of my second story bedroom, I see
your one green eye as bright as a dying star.
This month when black cats disappear you have
appeared at my doorstep, familiar
greetings eking from your collapsing jaw.
This month of ghosts and skeletons, long after
we buried you in a back yard hole my brother dug.
We placed a stone so we could find you.
Yet you are here, haunting a strange house
800 miles away from home and stone.
My dear unwelcome visitor, I cannot hold you.
Your vertebrae cut into my fingers.
Your claws dig into the scar tissue beneath my sternum.

Lilah Katcher’s work has appeared in Tripping the Light Fantastic: Weird Fiction by Deaf and Hard of Hearing Writers and Under a Shared Umbrella: Tales of Synchronicity and Happenstance. Lilah is an MFA student at American University, where she is also the Nonfiction Editor for FOLIO.