Cat 

I am an indoor cat sprinting out the back door at the earliest opportunity. 

I will die because I was curious. 

I am a cat getting hit by a car asking the car for forgiveness;

Forgive me for leaping in front of you, forgive me for making a mess. 

Forgive me for thinking the world would be beautiful.

From the Bough of a Willow Tree 

You say “of course, sweetheart,” and I hear get thee to a nunnery.”

I walk home singing under my breath and smiling at strangers.

I only know how to write one song. It goes: I LET LOVE DESTROY ME.

The cracks aren’t letting any light in; the pouring out from me is too great.

The desire to be loved oozes and leaves a trail behind me. Follow it down

to the river. You’ll hope to find me with those same pleading eyes, my old

whorish silence. The song of my life is 4’33. Awaiting a man’s voice 

to be the music. Not now, no more. Not meant for me. You follow my desire

to the river and find me on the branch of a willow, laughing wildly. 

And I do recognize my face in the water. And I do recognize my name 

when it is called. No passive recipient of hallucinations, visions,

transmissions from some imagined heaven or hell. My last whorish act

is to recognize my face on the river’s placid surface, and then construct 

the image of my waterlogged corpse, surrounded by flowers. 

One last display for the whole world, only for you to see.

Dream Analysis 

When I sleep over fourteen hours

I can’t remember my dreams.

I almost miss the violence, 

surreal visions of lovers, 

friends, and acquaintances 

making attempts on my life 

with inhuman strength 

and callousness. Maybe 

a psyche composed of dull  

TV static is the natural order.

Maybe my desire to reach 

beneath reality for 

some other realer thing 

is the result of a resistance to

dopamine, the machinations

of an addict’s brain and 

nothing more. I don’t know

whose voice says it 

but they’re saying: Relinquish

the desire for stories, a climax

and a resolution. Relinquish

the desire for God, for an  

enchanted world. Accept that 

your encounters with romance

are mere reactions to 

stimuli in the environment.  

It is this or your continued suffering; 

There is nothing so painful 

as a half-answered prayer.  

Every perfect kiss to be followed

by this or that recrudescence –

A body that tremors, crumples,

and remembers gravity with a 

thud. A groan, the sunrise ache

that says I ground my teeth 

again, and an overbite that makes

the bottom row cut into the roof of 

my mouth. One morning I wake

to a pink pillowcase tarnished. 

From that day on I place the  

stuffed lamb my sister gave me 

at the foot of the bed before I sleep.

I don’t think I could take being confronted

by the snowy white thing stained 

with my blood. And there I go  

again assuming things mean 

other things – that a lamb is innocent,

that there’s love behind a kiss. 

That your name is a term with 

a referent. That speech is something

other than sound.  

And I spend weeks thinking, 

“Is that all it was?”  

And I write the conclusion to my

love story that wasn’t 

a love story, that thing 

I constructed on my own  

out of spare parts, spared  

moments nothing more. Love is 

a mutually agreed upon  

delusion, and I dreamed alone. 

But like a fool, like 

an unsatisfied child at 

the end of a bedtime story, 

still unready for the light 

to go out, I am begging 

for another ending; 

“Is that all there is?” 

So we can give it one more go. 

Here’s how we can do it: 

You have to hold my face 

when I’m crying. You have to 

kiss me on the forehead.  

And when I ask you, again, 

“Is that all there is?”

you will find yourself unable

to lie and unable to hurt me.

You will lean down and say,

“For now, yes. But 

we can make something up.”

Adeline Swartzendruber is a writer and actress living in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in Expat, Spectra, Charm School Mag, and Egirl Zine.