She believes nothing exists without its opposite; winners and losers, fractured and whole, loved and unloved.  She is never quite right; too much of this, too little of that.  A friend told her the secret was to be loved more than one loves.  She tried it once but being a heartbreaker scars you as deeply as being heartbroken.  Heartbreaking is beyond and beneath her.

 

She steps back into her role.  She rinses the suds while shielding his eyes.  She will be careful with him, as he will be careless with her.  He shakes his head.  He laughs as the droplets scatter and the cats skid from the room.  She laughs too but sadness consumes her.  He is not a cruel man and his intentions are true but she wonders if her love is as unwanted as the ravaged prey the cats leave on his doorstep.

 

Together they cross the threshold into her room.  So it begins.  The beginnings are different but the endings the same.  They wrestle with the light switch.  He wants to see her while she’s afraid he’ll see through her.  She wins because she has more to lose.

 

Later he pulls her to her feet, wraps his arms around her and slow dances her round the room.  He croons a song into her ear; his song.  She thinks him clueless and oblivious.  She can endure anything but tenderness.  It makes her brittle; makes the blood rush from her heart to her veins and ears.

 

When she awakes, he is gone.  A note lays folded on the damp pillow.  She knows the message, if not the words.  There is no urgency.  She will read it later or not at all.

 

She walks to the kitchen, lights a cigarette and squints into another luminous day.  She senses it before she feels it.  The cigarette drops from her fingers, extinguishes in the sink.  She barely believes the cats tripping beneath her feet.  She thinks them the most beautiful cats she’s ever seen although she knows it’s not true.

 

She runs back to the bedroom to snatch the note: "Left the cats to keep you company.  See you tonight.”

 

She laughs as she says aloud, "He’s coming back and I’m the cats’ mother”.