Bisou

One afternoon, Muriel across the street decided to put her 3-year old cat down.

Ma Bisou n'est pas fine,
she says and blinks.
Elle crache et elle est
jalouse -- with a note of
civilized frustration in
her voice: je m'en
débarrasse.


She waits a moment
on the other side of the fence,
the pet-carrier in her hand
(is she waiting for
approval? sympathy?
condemnation?), then
walks briskly away.


Mouth full of silence,
unchewed thoughts,
and an urge to run,
run down the alley,
run faster than the few
seconds left to save
what's left of Bisou's


feline life, revert the
absurdist sketch into
a mini happy-ending,
laugh at the foiled
attempt at useless
murder -- instead,
the silence continues


as the sound of steps
in the alley dies down.
Inaction on a small
scale, and days on
end to wonder if
this awkwardness
was just a random whim

or a symptom of a much bigger
thing.

A few days before: if you look hard, you'll see the white-gray speck of Bisou in the centre