TABITHA

When she first came to my home
she hid for three weeks.
Her food, 
that I laid out for her in her new blue bowl, 
full each morning,
by evening was gone.

Down the corridor, under the beds, 
in wardrobes and bathroom cupboards,
up and down the street 
I called called 
called her name.

Had she run away?
            Had she been run over?
                        Had she been torn under the jaws
                                                of the neighbour’s jagged fence?
No.
Each morning, her blue bowl,
empty.

She arrived suddenly,
dressed in her finest pearls, 
white gloves, like a young girl, 
hands folded in her lap, 
waiting at the threshold to be presented to society. 

She had taken the time 
to apply eye makeup, black liner 
carefully curved to emphasise 
the fine upward turn of her green faceted eyes.

From her vantage point at the edge of my corridor, 
she watched
as I washed dishes, 
            carried out laundry, 
                        watered pot plants by the back door,
                                                            or sat at my desk.

Hers was the stillness of the Sphinx of Egypt, 
the slow flow of the River Nile,
except for her eyes 
that followed
the jagged limits of my life. 

Then one day 

she followed me, from
laundry to desk to sink to desk to fridge 
to lounge to desk to back yard to front 
and back to desk desk desk

and she slept, 
not in the cardboard box filled 
with my old shawls and blankets, 
but sometimes on the couch,
            sometimes on an armchair by the window
                       sometimes in a patch of afternoon sun by the back door.

No sleeping place ever seemed quite right, 
till one night,
o so gently
she leapt up onto the foot of my bed,
settled herself close like an embryo,
curled herself up at the final turn of the umbilical cord of my toes,
and for the first time in my life, 
I learned to purr.

Anita Jawary is a Melbourne writer, artist and poet. She has worked variously as a teacher, academic and freelance journalist. She is a fan of Charles Dickens and has written a series of short stories called The Dickensian Challenge in his honour. Jawary’s poetry and flash fiction have recently been published in Meniscus, Jewish Women of Words, Songs of Eretz, Jewish Literary Journal and Poetica. Her short work of fiction, The Last Time I Saw You, is recently published in the print anthology The Incompleteness Book II. See thedickensianchallenge.com.