—after Frank O’Hara
You love that video I sent you of my two cats twirling and dancing
to Billy Preston,
following, Will it go ‘round in circles, a red dot extended from my
finger. Behind the camera,
I chuckle through your phone, some three hundred miles away,
you say you love it,
love me—courtship in the time of Tinder means always sharing
and generating content.
Ashamed, I never told you that video reminds me, against my will,
of our old cat, Shadow,
who—sick and frail—crawled into a washing machine to hide,
dark, warm, inviting,
and my sister in the twilight between night and morning—tired,
groggy, zombified—
who needs to wash a work uniform, racing the slow rising sun,
starts without looking,
but who would ever dare to look down into those mundane tombs?
I know I never do.
He went around once only, only once, shadow trailing behind Shadow,
before the clatter says stop,
as if the washing machine were beating upon a worn-down war drum,
a song but ain’t no melody.
Our family doesn’t talk about it. I never learned how to share wounds
with loved ones, so
I saved the video, I tried to separate the memories, a small mangled body
inside every love story.
Sean Enfield is an essayist, poet, gardener, bassist, and educator from Dallas, TX. His writing attempts to find connection through music and words as reclamation of labor as community care and as resistance to the many forces of white supremacy working against marginalized bodies. His debut essay collection, Holy American Burnout!, is forthcoming from Split/Lip Press in December 2023.