Cats

For weeks we’ve cradled stilled strays from our street, scooped

      each near weightlessness, their fallen heads, each still-soft

           neck, strange fur so velvet it grazes the plastic. We shimmy

their extended limbs into drawstring liners, as if our

      swaddling could coax them from their permanent reaching.

           Hard, not to read a question into each new body’s

appearance, to wake each day slow to draw back

      the curtain, or to spackle this desert with a memory of the ocean, in

            the Philippines my small aunt streaked into her pillowed box. Heavier

to see México shimmering in our eyes’ corners with each daily

      lightness we bear. Even in cats, the body is testimony

            to movement, and its arrest: has pulled from the shadow

tinseled with light: —troubled the air close to shelter, or an unknown

      expanse, and in our hands we can still feel their weight, fragrant

            with the territory for which they strained, though we already know

no love, nor music, can harvest this breath back. A radio

      we can’t see streams from a nook in our neighborhood, telling our days,

            our city’s name, El Paso, fastened to a sorrow between

the words refuge and nothing. Each morning another reporter

      tows the word border through our air, as if it’s not the where

            we live. So we wake to gather who we claim,

even if just for the minutes we can carry. Migrant

      countries of sand whorl around us, soot our lashes and grit

            our wind, our present whisking to history. So we shelter

our own gradations, each fresh injury of time stunned from a body’s

      pulse, mark the day’s brutalities, and heave into our arms

            these light-filled limbs, still stretching to a place within reach.