Mimi

by: E.M. Burlingame

From the islands of Japan she came,
a small handful of smoke and silk,
no bigger than the space between
one heartbeat and the next.

Through the long ruin of orders and papers,
through steel and empty rooms and the slow
rebuilding of a man from pieces,
she held the only line that never broke.

Three lost boys learned to sleep in peace
because she curved herself around their fear
and wouldn't let the dark have them.
Her love was never loud. It simply refused to leave.

And when the war finally stopped,
when even I could move no farther,
she would climb the hill of my chest
and pour herself out in a purr
that shook her whole small body
until the world went quiet
and there was nothing left but her.

Now life's lost what made it hold.
The fire's gone out one last time.
The old world ends not with the last of fellows,
not with family or friends or the world that burned,
but with the silence where a tiny cat once sang
the only song that ever made everything real.

She is gone.
And with her, the last true thing.