Day 8 NaPoWriMo: Arrivals and Departures

For Day 8 of NaPoWriMo, I wrote a fantastical poem. A poem of nine lives and nine deaths.

Arrivals and Departures

in your first life a cobra struck

your back right paw

the poison felt

like bath water

that lost its warmth

when you came back

you danced with

that same cobra and found

that it bled blue in

the afterlife

you painted the world

with its blood to celebrate

your next death

how your lover

fed you to the rats

or your third where

a butcher mistook

you for a meal or the next

when a mortal shaved your fur

until the blade cut bone

you bled blue and your skin

forgot how to make fur

you grew scales instead

and swam and swam

and watched Bastet

drown beside you

in the modern river

asphalt so black

it could be blue

the forth you didn’t drown

but you shivered furless

and curled up cold

your fifth you climbed

a great fir tree

to catch your prey

but you never found

a way back down again

your sixth you curled

next to the engine of a car

the seventh a coyote

caught your tail

and ate you whole

your eighth a little boy

dropped you from high up

to see if you landed

on your back

or on your paws

your ninth you ate

your last meal

hunted your last squirrel

and counted down all

your afterlives and inbetweens

and found a cobra

a young one

to let you bleed

blue and               depart