Three Line Thursday: "The Next Morning"

You've stolen away before dawn, before I could escape my slumber.
The sheets still own the languid curve of your body
More than I, for all my trying, ever did.

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

He was in the kitchen again this morning.

I locked both doors, front and back, before going to bed, and they're still locked. Windows have been painted shut since Thursday. The clothes dryer vent is hooked to the dryer, and the fireplace flue is closed. I even took a flashlight into the basement and checked for holes in the foundation, anything. There's simply no way to get into this house, but there he was. Still is. He's watching me right now.

I called animal control and they don't know how he escaped their holding room much less got all the way back here. They also said he acted normally while he was there, no cold unblinking stare, no claws out, ate their regular food, even purred. They actually suggested that I think about keeping him.

If I went to stay at my brother's place in Memphis, would he still be here when I got back? Or would he find me there? It's a three-hour flight, so I suppose if he appeared there that same day, then at least I'd know to be scared and stop feeling so foolish.

What does he want from me?

Maybe I should buy a gun.

Teachable Moment

Vacuum cementing. That's what it's called. Vacuum cementing.

When I was a kid, my mother used to pick me up after school every day. Always at the same time, always at the same spot, a smile and a wave, leaning over to push the door open for me, asking me about my day. Then one Tuesday afternoon she got a flat tire and couldn't get dad on the phone; I sat for an hour, panicked, alone, wondering if I'd ever see home again. It's the things you take absolutely for granted that, when they fail, can absolutely ruin you.

Doors are like that. You open a door, you go through; you think nothing of it. If it's locked, you use a key. If you have no key, you knock, and someone lets you in. If no one's home, no big deal, you come back later.

In space, the air is inside and you need to get inside with it before your tanks run dry, and there's no coming back later. If the hatch doesn't work, because the parts have cold-welded together, you are well and truly fucked.

Anyway, I'm attached to the umbilical. Come get the body when you can.

Three Line Thursday: "A Hole In The Water"

You know how seasick I get, remembering our honeymoon well,
Yet you spent all that money on that damn boat;
I can only assume it's to sail away from me.

Comrades-In-Arms

I wonder what  became of them all, the little army men from my childhood; I don't recall their fate. They're not to be found in any of the boxes containing the rest of my childhood. Did they end up in a musty shoebox in the attic, were they spilled across the floor of the garage and eventually swept out with the dust and leaves, were they left in the backyard between the blades of grass to eventually sink into rain-softened soil?

We won so many wars together, victories snatched from the jaws of ignominious defeat. I could use them, now.