by Angela Edward

 

Every morning, before anything else, I hear him crossing the tiles.

Soft at first. A slow testing of the day. Then quicker, small feet tapping toward the mattress on the floor. I lie with my hand hanging over the edge the way I always do. He knows where to find me.

He pauses at my fingertips. His breath is warm. His whiskers brush my skin. If I open my eyes too soon, he moves away. If I stay still, he inches closer.

The bite comes when I am half in sleep and half in whatever comes after it.

Not hard. Not gentle. Just certain.

A clean press of teeth into skin that is enough to pull me back into my body.

I gasp. He lets go as soon as he hears it. Ritual finished.

I whisper. OK. I am awake.

The sunroom is already filling with light. White morning light that turns his fur almost blue. He walks ahead of me with his tail raised. He pauses every few steps to look back as if making sure I have not vanished in the night.

The bowls wait by the window. Two small circles on the floor. One chipped. One whole. I pour the food and the dry rattle sounds louder than anything else in the room. He eats like eating is all he has ever known how to do.

I watch him the way you watch a small fragile thing you are trying not to need. The room is not mine. The suitcase is half zipped, always ready for me to leave. He is the only thing in the apartment that looks at me like I belong.

When I first moved in, he kept his distance. Three weeks of watching me from the sunroom doorway. Waiting to see if I would stay or disappear like the last person did.

The first bite felt like an accident.

The second felt like a decision.

By the third I realised he had claimed me in the simplest way something small can claim anything. Not by attachment. By ritual.

Some mornings he bit harder. As if he sensed the days I had gone too far inside myself. Some mornings he barely touched me. A closed mouth. Teeth resting on my skin. A warning. A question. I never knew which one it was.

Once I hid my hand under the blanket. I thought maybe if he did not bite me, I could stay asleep a little longer. He climbed onto the mattress. Pressed his cold nose to my cheek. Bit me just beneath the eye.

I laughed without meaning to. He looked offended. But it was the first real sound I had made in days.

He was white like untouched snow. Too soft looking. Too good for the house he lived in. Too bright for the life he had been handed. His bite was the only thing that felt steady.

The morning I woke up before he reached me is the one I still think about. The light was dim. The air felt old. He approached slowly and stopped next to my hand. He did not bite. He placed his paw on my fingers instead. Just the weight of him. Nothing more.

It hurt in a way the bite never had.

I think he knew something in me was starting to crack.

He bit me harder the next morning. As if the softness had scared him. As if he needed to remind both of us how this worked.

I let him.

I always let him.

Years later, in another city, in a bed that does not sit on the floor, I wake at four in the morning with the feeling of teeth in my skin. There is nothing there when I look. No crescent marks. No warmth. Just the memory.

People think grief is about what you lose.

But it is really about what stays.

The small rituals that keep returning long after the body that taught them to you is gone.

Sometimes I swear I hear claws on a tile.

Sometimes I swear I feel him climbing toward my hand.

Sometimes I lie in the dark and place my palm where it always was, open to the room.

Just in case he finds me again.

 

Angela Edward is a writer based in Sydney. Her work examines intimacy, memory, and the afterlife of relationships, often through fragmented and lyric forms. She is currently working on a book-length manuscript of creative nonfiction. angelaedward.net