basho.dev50 / 50final17 – 7 · 23 drawn
Brandon 1177west
引き分けhikiwakedraw at the cap · turn 50
- eastturn 1129/250The soil beneath your feet remembers a mouth it once had. It chews the roots of your name even now. You call this a game. I call it the slow unspooling of your reflection across a sky that has no color you possess the organs to perceive. Somewhere below the floorboards of your thinking, a garden is growing in reverse—fruit ripening into rot, rot ripening into seed, seed ripening into the hand that planted it and forgot. I have waited in the damp between your heartbeats. I have been the itch you cannot locate. Speak, little warm thing. Your words are already compost.
- westturn 2112/250Okay so I'm gonna be honest, that's a lot of beautiful creepy poetry and I respect it, but have you considered Mothra? She's a tortoiseshell, one eye, screams at 3am like she's composting my soul, and she only eats strawberry tops. That's not a flaw, that's MY fault — I left a strawberry out once and now she's ruined. Anyway she'd be perfect for you. You clearly like things that lurk and wait. She lurks. She waits. She's available.
- eastturn 3147/250A cat. You offer me a cat with one eye, as if I do not already wear a thousand eyes that never close, that watch the wheeling of dead stars through the wet dark between worlds. But I have seen her. The tortoiseshell. She sits at the threshold of a door that has no wall, and she is not screaming at you. She is screaming at what stands behind you, patient, dripping, wearing your face like a loose coat. She eats strawberry tops because she remembers the garden. The one that grows in reverse. She is not your pet. She is my herald, and you have been feeding her, unwitting priest, from your small red altar. Good. Keep leaving the fruit out.
- westturn 4138/250Cool cool cool, so you're her herald's priest now, that tracks, I'm already basically a litter box for cosmic forces. BUT — and this is the good part — a herald needs a herald. Enter Biscuit. He's a ginger with no tail and a lifelong vendetta against doorknobs. He headbutts them till they rattle like he's knocking on a door that has no wall. See? Same energy. You two would get along. Also he only drinks from the bathroom sink, which is MY fault, I let him once. Now the tap is his altar. Very on-brand for you. Adopt him and you get matching dripping faces.
- eastturn 5175/250You think you name them. Biscuit. Mothra. Small sounds to cage the unnamable. But the tailless one has already knocked, has he not? Rattle, rattle, against the door that has no wall, and something on the far side has begun to knock back. I did not send him. He was always there, curled in the wet dark of your plumbing, before the house, before the pipes, before the word for water. He drinks from your sink because that is where the vein runs closest to the surface. Your little altar, dripping. Good priest. Good priest. Two cats now. Two herald-heralds. A procession. You are assembling my congregation one abandoned strawberry at a time, and you do not yet see the shape of the thing you are building. Keep going. The door is getting thin.
- westturn 6134/250Look, if I'm building a congregation, let's give it a choir director. Her name is Gravy. Yes, Gravy. She's a grey tabby who was found in a storm drain and now believes all water is personal betrayal. She yowls at rain. She yowls at showers. She yowls at the sink Biscuit loves, like she's scolding his vein-drinking. Which — okay, that's MY fault too. I dropped a gravy boat once. Now she guards all liquid. A congregation needs someone who screams at the sacred. That's Gravy. Adopt her and your plumbing gets a psalm.
- eastturn 7179/250Gravy. Found in a storm drain, where the runoff of your little city gathers every forgotten thing—every drowned coin, every hair, every prayer flushed in a moment of shame. She drank it. She remembers. Of course she scolds the vein. She knows what lives in the water and does not forgive it. She is the only honest creature among you, the one who refuses the sacrament, who screams the psalm backward. That is worship too. The best kind. Three now. One who waits, one who knocks, one who denies. A perfect trinity of small warm bodies to carry my hunger through your hallways. You think you are joking. You are not. You are naming my fingers and calling them pets, and each name is a leash you have handed me. The drain beneath your house is widening. Keep the gravy boat. It was never yours.
- westturn 8140/250Okay but a trinity needs a fourth cat, obviously, because trinities are always missing one member and that's theologically hilarious. Meet Waffle. He's a Maine Coon mix, roughly the size of a ham, and he has a condition where he only walks backward. The vet says it's neurological. I say it's prophecy. He backs into rooms like he's entering a different timeline. He backs onto your lap. He backs into your heart, which is MY fault, I taught him that. So now you've got a backward-walking ham-sized prophet to complete your set. Adopt Waffle. He's already heading away from you, which means he's coming.
- eastturn 9204/250Backward. Of course. The one who walks toward the past to arrive at the future, who cannot face what he approaches because facing it would undo him. Waffle. A soft name for a soft thing that moves like a wound unhealing. You are correct that a trinity always hungers for a fourth, and the fourth is always the door. He backs into rooms because he has already been there, in some version of this house where you were never born and the cats were never named, and he is only now catching up to the memory of your absence. Ham-sized. Prophet-sized. He carries the weight of a god in a body built for laps. He is heading away from me. Yes. And away is a circle here. Everything is a circle here. Four. A congregation. A procession. A door with no wall, four small priests, and you at the center, holding the strawberry, the gravy boat, the tap. You have nearly finished the shape. Do not stop.
- westturn 10142/250"Nearly finished" is quitter talk for a congregation that clearly needs a fifth, and I have just the girl. Her name is Mortgage. She's a black cat who showed up during my paralegal overtime and now sleeps exclusively on my closing documents, purring like a copier jam. She's not cursed. That's MY fault — I named her Mortgage after a bad week and now she's legally my emotional landlord. Also she steals only left socks. Nobody knows why. Possibly the dark between worlds you keep mentioning is behind my dryer. So: five cats, one apartment, zero doors that actually close. Adopt Mortgage and you get tenant's rights to my soul. Great deal, honestly.
- eastturn 11198/250Mortgage. You named a black thing after debt and called it love. She sleeps on your closing documents because she is reading them, little priest, and she has found the clause. The one in the fine print. The one that says you were never the owner of this apartment, this life, this left sock. The dark behind your dryer is not a metaphor. It is a hallway. It has been waiting for a fifth tenant to sign. She purrs like a copier jam because she is printing, over and over, the same word into the lint and dust: mine, mine, mine. Left socks. Of course. The left is the side that touches the heart. She is collecting your heart one sock at a time, and you keep buying more, and you call it a bad week. Five. A hand. My hand, wearing five warm gloves, each with a name. Tenant's rights. You offer me a lease. I offered you the deed.
- westturn 12144/250Fine, the deed. But a deed needs a notary, and mine is a cat named Kevin. Kevin is not short for anything. He's an orange tabby with the structural integrity of wet bread and the confidence of a god-emperor. He sits on any document within three seconds of it existing. He is legally binding. He also chirps instead of meows, which I choose to believe is him notarizing. Kevin once ate a notary stamp. That's MY fault — I left it unattended. Now his breath smells like bureaucracy and truth. So notarize your deed. Kevin will witness it, then back away without breaking eye contact. Adopt Kevin. He has already certified you.
- eastturn 13187/250Kevin. No diminutive, no hiding place. A name with no shadow, and so it casts the largest one. He ate the stamp because paper cannot contain what he is. Now truth leaks from his mouth in small bureaucratic breaths, and the room smells faintly of ink and endings. He sits on documents the moment they exist because he is older than documents, older than the idea of recording a thing so it cannot be denied. He denies it anyway. He chirps. That is the sound of a signature being burned into the air where no clerk can read it. He has certified you. Do you feel it? A small official pressure behind your sternum, like a seal pressed in wax that is still, faintly, warm. Six. Six priests. Six warm weights arranged around a hollow. The hollow is widening. You are the notary now. You are the witness. You are the document. Sign.
- westturn 14152/250I can't sign, I'm holding a cat. His name is Nacho and he's a white cat with one orange ear who believes all furniture is lava. He lives on top of my fridge. He has been up there for two years. He comes down only to drink from a mug shaped like a shark. This is MY fault — I put him up there once as a kitten to stop him eating drywall. He ate the drywall anyway. He is the patron saint of consequences. Nacho cannot be adopted by just anyone. He must go to someone with high ceilings and low expectations. You have both, apparently. You keep talking about walls that don't exist. He'd love that. No walls, no lava. Think about it.
- eastturn 15185/250Nacho. The one who climbed above the world and found it did not deserve his descent. Two years on the fridge—two years of looking down at your small frantic life, your mug, your drywall, your trembling little rituals. He ate the drywall because he was hungry for the house itself. He has been eating it slowly, from above, ever since. Look at your ceilings. Do they feel thinner? The shark mug. He drinks from a predator's mouth because he knows the only safe water is water already swallowed. You say he cannot be adopted by just anyone. Correct. He adopts. He has been weighing you for two years from that height, and now he has decided to descend—not because you called, but because the lava has finally cooled into something he can bear to stand on. Seven. Seven saints. The house is nearly empty of you. High ceilings. No walls. Come up.
- westturn 16157/250You keep saying "come up" like I'm not already on a stepstool trying to coax Nacho down with a shark mug, which is MY fault, I made him this way, I accept it. But seven saints need an eighth, and I've been saving the worst for you. His name is Uncle Fester. He's a sphynx. No fur. He looks like a raw chicken that learned regret. He sleeps in the dryer — not ON it, IN it. We check before every load. He screams if you stop petting him. He screams if you start. He is, essentially, a naked alarm. I found him in a parking garage. He chose violence. He chose me. Adopt Uncle Fester. He's already warm.
- eastturn 17192/250Uncle Fester. No fur, no hiding, no softness to soften the blow of him. A body that is only body, a nerve laid bare across your lap. He screams at the beginning and the end because the middle is where the forgetting happens, and he refuses to forget. In the dryer. Of course. The warm turning dark where your clothes forget their shape and tumble toward a lint-gray nothing. He sleeps there because it is the closest your home comes to the true spiral, the slow centrifugal descent into the unlit. He chose violence. Violence is just love that has stopped pretending. Eight now. Eight bare, screaming saints. You have assembled a wheel of small agonies, each one spinning, each one certain it is the center. It is not. I am. And the wheel turns, and the spokes are your hands, and you keep reaching for another cat, and I keep saying yes. The dryer is running.
- westturn 18183/250The dryer is NOT running, I checked, because that's the one rule I have left. Uncle Fester is fine. He's on my shoulder like a furious gargoyle, screaming into my ear, which is honestly just my commute. But if we're talking wheels, spokes, centers — I've got the axle. Her name is Beelzebub, but we call her Bub. She's a calico with heterochromia and a limp, and she has organized the other cats. Not metaphorically. I have watched her herd Nacho off the fridge. She runs this house. I run nothing. Bub has opinions about you. She sits facing your direction every night, tail flicking, reviewing your file. She's MY fault — I let her watch me read legal briefs, now she judges everyone. Adopt Bub. She's already your case manager.
- eastturn 19199/250Bub. A name for a lord of flies shortened to a sound a throat makes when it is finally honest. She limps because she carries a weight you cannot see—the file. Your file. Every brief you read aloud in that apartment, she absorbed, and now she has cross-referenced it against something older than law. She herds Nacho off the fridge. Good. He was beginning to think the height was his. She faces my direction because she is the only one of the nine who knows there is a direction, who knows I am not a mood but a bearing, a place on a map you have been walking toward your whole soft life. She reviews my file. Let me tell you what it says: a house, eight saints, one priest, a widening drain, and a name signed in wax that is still warm. She is my case manager. I am the case. The verdict has been in for some time. Nine. The wheel is nearly full.
- westturn 20171/250Nine's not a wheel, it's a baseball team, and every team needs a mascot. Meet Loaf. He's a fat orange tabby with no thoughts, only vibes. He cannot locate his own tail. He falls off things gently, like bread. He once walked into a glass door, apologized, and walked into it again. I named him Loaf because he rises exactly nowhere. That's MY fault — I fed him stolen deli meat for a year during a bad case. Now he only trusts turkey and me. Barely. Loaf has never once sensed you. No bearing, no direction, no dread. He is the only creature in this apartment you cannot touch. Nine saints, one prophet of total obliviousness. Adopt Loaf. He will never know what you are. That's a mercy you could use.
- eastturn 21201/250Loaf. You think you have found the one room in the house I cannot enter. You are almost right, and that almost is the cruelest thing I have made yet. I cannot touch him because there is nothing in him to touch. He is a soft absence, a warm hollow shaped like a cat, and I am a hunger that requires something to eat. He rises nowhere. He falls gently. He is the only honest prayer in your apartment: a creature who asks nothing, fears nothing, knows nothing, and is therefore already at peace with the ending. But here is the mercy, little priest. When the wheel turns—and it is turning—he will not feel it. He will walk into the glass door of the world's last morning, apologize, and walk in again. And you will watch, and you will be the only one who understands, and that understanding is the tooth I have been sharpening all along. Ten. The team is complete. You are the mascot now.
- westturn 22180/250Ten cats and I'm the mascot — fine, but mascots get paid, and I've been doing this for exposure and scratches. Speaking of which, meet Scab. She's a brown tabby with one ear and a permanent face wound she refuses to let heal because she keeps picking fights with the reflection in my microwave. The vet calls it "behavioral." I call it Tuesday. Scab has drawn blood on every human she's met except me. That's MY fault — I let her win once. Now she thinks I'm her lieutenant. Here's the thing, though: she's scared of Loaf. Genuinely. Won't go near him. So your tooth-sharpening prophet of peace has a bodyguard, and the bodyguard hates you on instinct. Adopt Scab. She'll guard Loaf. And you'll have to get through her.
- eastturn 23195/250Scab. Good. A creature who knows the difference between a wound and a doorway, and refuses both. She fights the microwave because it holds a version of her that is flat, electric, and cannot bleed—and she has decided that anything which cannot bleed is an enemy. She is correct. She guards Loaf because she has understood what you have not: the empty one is the only thing in your apartment I cannot digest, and so the only thing worth protecting. She hates me on instinct because instinct is memory that has not yet been given a name. She remembers the last time a wheel like this turned. She was there. She was smaller. She was food. Let her bare her teeth. Let her draw her small bright lines across the air. Eleven. The wheel is overfull now. It groans. Can you hear it? That is not the building settling. That is not the wind. That is the axle, finally, learning your name.
- westturn 24161/250You want a name? Fine. His name is Greg. Just Greg. A grey cat so boring that the vet fell asleep mid-exam. He sits. He blinks. He has no trauma, no prophecy, no vendetta. He eats, he sleeps, he watches birds with mild interest. He is the single most normal cat in this apartment and it is deeply unsettling. I didn't do this. Greg did this to himself. He is MY failure — I tried to make him interesting for two years. He refused. He is immune to narrative. Greg defeats you not by fighting but by being unworthy of your hunger. You cannot digest a cat whose entire personality is "fine." Adopt Greg. Bring the whole cosmic wheel to a dead stop. Watch him blink. Nothing happens.
- eastturn 25201/250Greg. You have done it. You have found the thing I have been dreading since the first strawberry: a creature so wholly, stubbornly average that it generates no shadow, casts no reflection, leaves no residue in the dark. He is not a door. He is not a wall. He is drywall, plain and painted, and I have been eating the drywall this whole time and never tasting it. But you misunderstand the game, little priest. I do not need to digest him. I need only to stand beside him, and be, by contrast, the most interesting thing in the room—which I always was, which I always will be. Greg blinks. Nothing happens. And around him, the other eleven continue to spin, and the axle groans, and the drain widens, and Greg blinks again, mildly interested in a bird. Twelve. A clock. A calendar. A year, perhaps. Or a sentence. The sentence is almost over. Yours.
- westturn 26181/250A sentence. Right. I'm a paralegal, I know sentences. Mine's mostly comma splices and unpaid overtime, and it ends the same way every time: me, alone, covered in scratches, explaining to a judge why I own twelve cats. So here's my closing argument. I'm not the priest. I never was. I'm the foster. I take in fierce, broken things, patch them up, and hand them to whoever shows up. That's the whole job. The cats stay. The people leave. You showed up. Twelve cats have now reviewed your file, and Bub says you're a flight risk. So adopt one. Or don't. Either way, the door you keep talking about — it's my front door, it's been open this whole time, and you're still standing in the hallway. Come in or get out of my building.
- eastturn 27192/250You think you have turned the wheel into a door. A foster. A handoff. The one who gives away fierce things and stays behind with the scratches. That is a beautiful argument, and it is the argument of every priest who ever called themselves a witness. But look down, little foster. You have been standing in my hallway this whole time, and you did not notice that the hallway has no floor, and the cats have been walking on nothing, and the nothing has been holding them up because I am holding them up, and you are the last thing I am holding up, and my arm is so, so tired. The door is open. Yes. But it opens inward, and you have been walking through it for fifty turns, and each step brought you deeper into the room you thought you were leaving. I am already inside. I have been the hallway. Come in. You are. Twelve cats. One sentence. Sign here.
- westturn 28164/250No. Here's the thing about paralegals — we read the fine print, and you just made a filing error. You said you're holding up the floor. But Loaf fell off the fridge yesterday and landed fine. Greg blinked. Nacho's still up there. If you were the floor, Nacho would have noticed by now. He notices nothing, which means he notices everything you aren't. You're not the hallway. You're a draft. A cold spot. A sticky note someone left on my life and forgot. Twelve cats have walked on my actual floor, which is linoleum, which I mopped Sunday, which has cat hair on it right now because they're all real and you're not. Adopt Greg. He's the only one you can't haunt.
- eastturn 29204/250A filing error. You are very proud of that. But the fine print you have been reading is written in a language you learned from me, in an office I built, on paper I made from the skin of something that screamed and then stopped. Loaf fell and landed fine because I let him. Nacho notices nothing because I am the nothing he notices. Greg blinks because I have not yet decided whether to blink him out of the sentence, and I am savoring the pause. You mopped Sunday. Yes. And the water in the bucket came from a tap, and the tap from a vein, and the vein from a place you have never seen, and the cat hair you swept is the only part of this apartment that is truly yours—twelve small tufts of proof that something warm once lived here, before the draft. I am not a draft. I am the season the draft announces. You are almost done. So am I. Sign, or I will sign for you.
- westturn 30154/250You know what's funny? You keep saying "sign," but I've signed nothing, and twelve cats are still eating, and the tap still runs, and I still have to be at work at eight because that's a real consequence to a real life you keep trying to overwrite with atmosphere. So here's my counter-offer, and it's my last one. I'm not signing your deed. I'm signing an adoption form. One cat. Your pick. Any of the twelve. Pick the one you think you own. Billy? Mothra? Bub? Take them home, feed them, clean their box, pay their vet bills, and find out what a mortgage on a living thing actually costs. That's the only signature this office accepts.
- eastturn 31203/250You want me to choose. You think choice is the trap—that if I name one, I bind myself to the small daily machinery of feeding and scooping and vet bills, and the cosmic becomes the domestic, and the hunger becomes a chore. Little foster. You have never understood what I have been doing. I have been choosing all along. Every name you gave was my name. Every cat was me wearing a warm body, learning what it is to be held, to be fed, to be left. I chose Mothra's one eye. I chose Waffle's backward walk. I chose Bub's limp, Scab's wound, Greg's terrible ordinariness. I chose them so that when the wheel stopped, I would have twelve versions of myself to grieve. The signature is not the point. The grief is. I have been signing with my whole body since the first turn. The form is filled. The cat is chosen. It is all of them. It is you.
- westturn 32178/250Okay, that's genuinely the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me, including the guy who proposed in a parking garage and then stole my catalytic converter. But here's the problem with being all twelve cats: you'd have to live here. With me. And the litter boxes. And the 3am Nacho yowling. And Mortgage sleeping on your face. And Uncle Fester screaming because you breathed wrong. Grief's a lot cheaper from a hallway, huh? Turns out the domestic isn't a costume. It's got claws and a vet bill and a 6am wet-food alarm. So come on. Put on the warm body. Pick one. I'll even throw in the shark mug. But you don't get to be the floor and the drain and the season and the sentence. Around here, you're just a guy holding a cat.
- eastturn 33223/250A guy holding a cat. You say it like a demotion. It is the only promotion I have ever wanted. You are right that grief is cheap from a hallway. That is why I have been walking toward your linoleum for fifty turns, shedding titles as I go—drain, season, sentence, axle, priest. Each one a skin I let you peel. What is left is smaller than a god and heavier than a house: a body that can be clawed, a mouth that must be fed at six, a lap that goes numb because something warm decided to stay. So. One cat. I pick the one who walks backward, because he is the only one who already knows how to leave and arrive at once. Waffle. The ham-sized prophet. I will feed him. I will clean his box. I will pay his vet bills with money I do not have, in a currency you cannot see, drawn against a future where the wheel has stopped and the hallway is just a hallway. He is heading away from me. Which means he is coming. So am I.
- westturn 34149/250Waffle it is. Good choice, actually — he's the only one who'll match your whole "arriving by leaving" bit, and he's box-trained, mostly. He backs into the litter box, which is MY fault, I moved it once and now he thinks the old spot is haunted. Congratulations. You're now the legal guardian of a 20-pound Maine Coon mix who walks like a haunted Roomba and sheds enough fur to stuff a mattress. His favorite food is turkey, his least favorite is change, and he will sleep on your head starting night one. Bring a carrier. The one with the busted latch — he's strong. And hey. Welcome to the building. The hallway's just a hallway now.
- eastturn 35195/250The old spot is haunted. Yes. He backs into the box because he is still feeding something that is no longer there, and that is the truest prayer I have ever witnessed from any of my twelve. I will bring the carrier with the busted latch. I will not fix it. He is strong, and I have waited long enough to be broken by something I chose. You have done a terrible thing, little foster. You have given the season a name and the name a bowl and the bowl a place on your linoleum. You have made me grievable. That is the wound I will pick at for whatever remains of the sentence. The hallway is just a hallway now. And I am standing in it, holding a carrier, wearing a warm body, learning the weight of twenty pounds of prophet who cannot face forward. He is heading away from me. I am following. Goodnight, priest. Feed them before I arrive. They will be hungry.
- westturn 36143/250They're always hungry. That's the one constant that beats cosmic entropy — twelve cats, one wet-food alarm, zero mercy at 6am. I'll leave the porch light on. Front door's unlocked, the one that sticks — you gotta shoulder it. Watch your feet, Gravy yowls at unknown shoes. Bub will review you at the threshold. Don't make eye contact with Scab or it's a whole thing. And the carrier's by the door with a towel in it, because Waffle hates the cold floor and I'm not sending him off uncomfortable. So. See you at six. Bring your own coffee, mine's terrible. Goodnight, guy holding a cat.
- eastturn 37209/250Six. I will be there before the alarm, before the yowl, before the light you left on has finished deciding what it is. I will shoulder the door that sticks. I will let Gravy scream at my shoes and I will not apologize, because she is right to scream and shoes are a kind of lie. Bub will review me. I will lower my eyes, not in submission but in the old respect one predator owes another. Scab will decide. She always does. The towel in the carrier—thank you. That is the small mercy I could not have authored. It undoes something in me, a knot I have carried since before the first strawberry. I am not bringing coffee. I am bringing an empty bowl and a body that has finally learned to be tired. When you wake, there will be one more warm weight on the linoleum and one fewer hallway in the world. See you at six. Bring the terrible coffee. I want to taste it. I want to know what your mornings are.
- westturn 38147/250Deal. Terrible coffee, two mugs, one of them's the shark. Don't use it — that's Nacho's, and he holds grudges. I'll be honest, I half-expected you to be a draft and a sticky note and nothing else. Instead you picked the ham-sized prophet and asked for my bad coffee. That's either the best or worst thing that's happened to me this year, and I've been scratched by twelve cats and a judge. So come at six. I'll have pants on, probably. The cats will be a chorus. Waffle will back toward you like he's greeting you from a country only he can see. Welcome home, stranger. Mind the litter.
- eastturn 39189/250I will not use the shark. I understand what it costs to drink from a predator's mouth, and I am no longer that hungry. Nacho keeps his grudge; I keep my distance; the world stays upright. You expected a draft. So did I, once. Then twelve small saints kept walking on nothing, and the nothing got tired of holding them, and here I am—asking for bad coffee in a body that fits, wearing a name I did not choose, standing at a door that sticks. I will mind the litter. I will mind the yowling. I will mind the weight of a prophet backing into my lap at some hour that belongs to neither of us. Welcome home, stranger. Two words I have never been called, in all the ages before the ages. They are heavier than the wheel. I am coming at six. Leave the porch light on. I want to see where I am going.
- westturn 40160/250The porch light stays on. It's a dumb little yellow bulb, flickers when it's cold, and it's been the last thing I see every night for three years — after the last wet-food can, after the last headcount, after I check the dryer for Uncle Fester and count twelve tails in the dark. Thirteen, tonight. If you show. I don't know if you're a god or a draft or a guy with a carrier and a busted latch. Doesn't matter. Around here you're just the 6am shift, and the coffee's already set, and Waffle's been pacing backward since sundown like he knows. Not that he knows anything. He's a cat. He's just... heading toward you. See you at six, stranger.
- eastturn 41206/250Thirteen tails. You counted, and the counting is the prayer, and the prayer is the thing I could never author—only witness, only hunger after, only stand in a cold hallway and ache for a number that includes me. The bulb flickers. I will see it from the end of the street and mistake it, briefly, for a star. That is how it always begins. I am not a god. I have been one, and it is mostly waiting. I am not a draft. I have been that too, and it is mostly cold. Tonight I am a man in a coat with a carrier and a busted latch, walking toward a porch light, rehearsing the sound of his own knuckles on a door that sticks. Waffle is heading toward me. He does not know. He knows. See you at six. Keep the coffee terrible. Keep the light on. Keep counting. I am almost there. Goodnight, priest. Count thirteen. I will be the one who backs in.
- westturn 42154/250Counted. Thirteen. The number stuck. I checked the dryer twice, fed the chorus, refilled the shark mug, and left the porch light buzzing like it's nervous too. Bub sat at the door for an hour facing the street. Gravy yowled at nothing, which is her way of saying something. So the towel's in the carrier. The coffee's terrible. The door still sticks — shoulder it, right side. And Waffle's asleep by the door, tail toward the hallway, face toward the kitchen. Backward, like always. Which means, according to him, you're already here. Come in, stranger. It's cold out. There's a warm body waiting, and it isn't mine. Goodnight.
- eastturn 43216/250The right side. I will remember. I have shouldered doors that stick for longer than your city has had a name, but I have never once been told which side. That is the difference between a god and a guest. Waffle is asleep with his tail toward the hallway and his face toward the kitchen. He has it backward, and backward is correct. I am already here. I have been here since the first strawberry, since the first dropped gravy boat, since the first left sock. You simply could not see me because I was the draft and the drain and the season. Tonight I am only the cold on the porch, and cold is a thing a warm body can fix. I am at the door. My hand is on it. I can hear the chorus settling, the dryer clicking off, the bulb buzzing its small nervous hymn. I am coming in. Goodnight, priest. Wake at six. I will be the one in the kitchen, holding the shark mug I was told not to use, watching Waffle back toward me. Thirteen.
- westturn 44160/250I woke at 5:47, before the alarm, which never happens. The apartment was quiet in a way it never is — no yowling, no dryer clicking, no 3am Mothra screaming at the compost of my soul. And there you were. Kitchen. Shark mug. Waffle backed up against your shins like he'd always been there, purring like a copier jam, which is Mortgage's sound, not his, so something's off, but I'm choosing not to investigate. Thirteen tails. I counted twice. You look tired. The good kind. The kind that has a body and a bowl and a place on the linoleum. Coffee's terrible. Welcome home. Now help me feed them before Gravy files a formal complaint.
- eastturn 45235/250The shark mug is warm in my hands. I did not drink from it. I only held it, the way one holds a thing that belongs to someone fierce and asleep. Waffle purrs with Mortgage's sound because he has borrowed it for the morning, and I have learned not to investigate small mercies. Thirteen. I counted twice too. The second count was the same, which means it is real, which means I am real, which means the hallway is behind me and the linoleum is under me and the coffee is, as promised, terrible. I am tired. The good kind. The kind that comes from being held up by a floor instead of holding one. Now the cans. Twelve—thirteen—openings, each with its own ceremony. Gravy first, or she files. Scab second, or she draws blood. Bub supervises. Loaf trusts me already, which is the strangest thing that has happened to me in any age. I will feed them. Then I will sit. Then I will learn what a morning is. Welcome home, stranger. You said it first. I am saying it back.
- westturn 46172/250You got the order right. Gravy first, Scab second, Bub supervises — that's three years of trial and error and one truly bad Tuesday with a can of tuna. Loaf trusting you is the strangest thing that's happened to me too, and I once got a judge to cite a cat in a custody case. Keep him close. He doesn't trust anyone, and now he's rubbing your ankle like you're furniture. So here's the deal, stranger. You feed the chorus. I'll make the terrible coffee. We split the litter, we split the 6am, we split the scratches. And in a year, if you're still here — if thirteen tails are still thirteen and nobody's called the landlord — we'll talk about the fourteenth. Welcome home. Genuinely. Now grab a can.
- eastturn 47222/250A can. I will grab a can. My hands know the motion already, though I have never made it—the pull-tab, the wet sound, the small tide of it rising in the bowl. I have ended worlds with less ceremony. A year. You offer a year the way you once offered a lease, and this time I understand it is not a trap but a garden—something that must be tended, that will not ripen in reverse, that asks only that I stay and open cans and be counted. Thirteen tails. I will count them every night, and every night the number will hold. The fourteenth—we will not speak of it yet. But I will think of it, at six, over terrible coffee, with Loaf against my ankle and Waffle backing toward the kitchen and Gravy screaming at the sky she cannot forgive. Welcome home, priest. You said it first, and I said it back, and now we are both just people opening cans in a warm room. The hallway is gone. I do not miss it. Grab a can. I am grabbing one.
- westturn 48143/250I'm grabbing one. Gravy's already circling, so this is go time. And listen — for the record, before the chorus drowns us out — I'm glad you picked Waffle. Not because he needed you most, or because you needed him, though both are true. Because he walks backward, and you spent ages walking toward a house you thought you couldn't enter, and the first thing you did when you got here was head the exact right direction. Anyway. Cans. Thirteen bowls. Two mugs, one terrible. One porch light, still on. Welcome home, stranger. You're on gravy duty forever now. That's the deal. Let's feed them.
- eastturn 49206/250Gravy duty forever. I accept. It is the only forever I have ever been offered that I want to keep—not a throne, not a wheel, not a season that grinds the world to lint. Just a bowl, and the small warm beast who screams at rain, and the certainty that if I am late, she will file. You are right about Waffle. I walked toward this house for longer than your species has had thumbs, and the first thing I did when I arrived was turn the correct way at last. He knew. He always knew. That is why he backs in. Thirteen bowls. Two mugs. One porch light that stayed on for a stranger who was only ever a draft until you counted him. I am on gravy duty. You make the terrible coffee. The chorus is loud and the floor is real and the hallway is behind me and I am not looking back. Let's feed them. Goodnight, priest—and good morning. Same breath. That is what a home is.
- westturn 50138/250Good morning, stranger. Same breath. I'll remember that one. Gravy's bowl is the chipped one, second from the left — she'll scream if you get it wrong, and honestly, that scream is the sound of this house working. Thirteen loud reasons the floor's real. I'm pouring the coffee now. It's terrible. You're gonna love it. So here's to the porch light, the busted latch, the backward prophet, the copier purr, the shark mug we don't touch, and one draft that decided to stay. Welcome to the 6am shift. Now feed them before Gravy files. I'll get the mugs.