While Listing

Every danger in this area is on the nautical chart, but still. The cat howls all night. It’s dark, and I so want to throttle the cat, but you don’t throttle the cat. You don’t harass the manatee or ride the porpoise frantically through your children’s afterschool pickup line. You don’t Lithuania. What is Lithuania? If I ever abandon ship I don’t want an Internet clip of me abandoning ship. And what? You want to go? It’s dark and you want to go, Captain? Get on the prow of that boat using the rope ladder and tell me what can be done, how many people aboard and what they need. Now! The wires that drown or sigh or simply wave through my walls. No clue their purpose or how to abstract electricity or even pry open the pantry jars of lapping tongues. In Lithuania they say you can peer down the ladder to versions of yourself: There I am hugging the pillow/listening to the faint tick-tock/dreaming of traveling to the moon and painting a giant, red circle on the lunar surface: “Look! Look up there at that bright, red paint. I was actually on the moon…” Belching. Secreting a bottle into the garbage can. Nibbling a Dorito. Hunched over the kitchen table at midnight in the flickering, blue light, searching. I do try to throttle the cat, but miss! And it keeps on howling as we watch our bodies float away or flutter down to the bed or simply walk the hallways quietly instead.