By Gene Novogrodsky

Twilight Kiss

…and she needed the kitchen redone; her son-in-law knew the guy who could do it; for three weeks he drove into her driveway at 8 a.m., got his tools, set up sawhorses and was busy outdoors and indoors until noon. He’d go away for lunch, come back in an hour and work as late as 8 p.m., twilight, Saturn in the West, moon in the East, bats starting their swoops, and eating mosquitoes hatched after a heavy rain ….

She walked outside to tell him that she really liked his work; he thanked her, smiled, and took a step towards her; she did not move, and in a moment he lightly kissed her, bending his head to reach her lips, and she stretched to reach his.

“Come early tomorrow. I’ll make breakfast. And you don’t have to leave for lunch.”
“Thanks, I will,” and they kissed again, softly … under her leafed tree, away from the streetlight, away from her porch light ….

TLY’s Gloves

…and they were in the street, late on a Saturday afternoon, gloves with the initials “TLY.” I picked them up, and considered putting them on the curb, for they had to belong to the construction workers who were adding a wing to the  overcrowded school. But I didn’t, and I took them home. “TLY” had to have another pair, many pairs. I use his, making stabs at work, and think of him: building schools; hospitals and, jails.

Dead Bobcat

“Two days dead,” the Animal Control man says, as he works the stiff body into a
black plastic garbage bag. “We get more bobcats than you think.”
“Do you incinerate them?”
“No, we take them to the landfill along with other dead animals we get off the
street and side of the road.”

The bobcat, not a wildcat (though it might have been) not an ocelot, not a tabby
cat, not a jaguar, not a leopard, not a tiger, not a lion, was lying on the side
of a busy suburban road, close to hundred-fifty thousand dollar and more homes,
near a resaca, near a drainage ditch. Its environment had changed, was still
changing, brush to homes, sloughs to pools, thickets to gates, hunters to cars
….

Whiskers – black – it had, and flies had settled on the whiskers, that
yellow-black face. Flies landing, flies leaving, flies to lose their soon-to-rot
- if left- meal.

The bobcat was rigid in a dead and eternal sleep when the Animal Control man
approached it with his black plastic garbage bag.

That whiskered face, the bobcat on its side, almost napping, but dead, hit by a
vehicle ….

Bobcats, school nicknames, whiskered faces drawn, cat-people, cat movies, cat
designs ….

One Animal Control man snapped instant picture; the other spoke on his cellphone
….The bobcat was inside the black plastic bag ….