That Boston life packed up so small

[sovay]

We would have attended the unveiling for Autolycus if he had been buried in a cemetery with a bronze marker, not a cairn at the foot of the forsythias where the small glacial stones have been piling all year and stray mint and rhubarb growing. It doesn't feel like a year. It doesn't feel like enough time to accustom to the absence of cat. All the rituals of our days are changed and remain so. We carry his memory with us, but I would rather carry the cat himself, all sixteen of his front claws hooked on my shoulder, dust-pink pads held skin-to-skin, seal-black ears alert, sincere lime-green eyes wide as the world.