Mom cutting Dad's hair in the kitchen. Feather voices
because they are discussing matters heavier than water,
jarring scrapes when they move the chair.
Tufts of hair fall, touching the
curved blade of ear. It is sharper, as are our brains,
than you think, even as
the night velvets. It pads alongside my cat,
who sits behind the laundry room door and makes old saxophone sounds.
I slip inside to touch
the kitten scruf of his neck.
How difficult it is, to definitively love or hate,
when everything is so soft.
From where I sit there are no windows
and except for drooping eyelids I would not believe
in the moon. Or in the swift autum