Black Cat

You brought me home at twenty-four. Another one of your cats allowed to slowly age within these rooms. You might find me taking a nap on your mother’s bed or skulking around your father’s garage. Slipping through the back door to hide in the greenhouse, trying to avoid getting roped into one of the never-ending tasks at hand. Not out of laziness, but more out of a desire to keep wandering,  poking about, unhindered. Content.

 It’s a comforting thing, knowing I don’t have to leave. That I won’t say the wrong thing, argue the wrong point, or be too loud in the evenings when I’m at my best. That I won’t be tried and banished for simply being.

“Is this yours or mine?” your mother asks, holding up one of the many grey hoodies that seem to multiply across the house. We can never figure it out. We just take turns wearing them, losing them, and rediscovering them until the summer heat sends the whole flock into hibernation. Somewhere along the way, those hoodies stopped belonging to anyone. They just belong to the house, the same way I do now.

There’s something tender about that. How I’ve eased into the soft corners of this home, fallen into its rhythms without causing too big of a ripple. How my presence blends with the worn wood, the humid air, and the relics of generations now resting in their places on the endless shelves. Another layer in the sediment of this place, one of the familiar shadows moving through the hallways at night, another voice in the long memory of these rooms.

I’ve become a ghost among the ghosts of Appalachia, seeping into the piedmont homestead, haunting quietly until some future owner finally brings out the holy water. Maybe not, maybe this will become another one of those houses hidden in the hills, abandoned with all its content left untouched. We’ll continue fixing things, moving items around, and walking these hallways until the hallways are no more. Until the house is worn down to detritus resting among the pine scrub and the privet.