We all have a heat

We all have a vice we keep circling as house cats hunt
for an opening to squeeze through. Maybe it’s meaty

as a person or thin as a folded letter. Maybe it’s the cigar
box buried in your nightstand so when your fingers burn

with the melancholy of being human you can remind yourself
of your halves. Tonight, you planted iris sprouts under

the full moon. Palms pressing the dirt and exposed roots
remind you of your recently dead, which remind you of

a letter writer, maybe bare-ankled and kicking dust
up the mountain range running across state lines through

both your hometowns. Maybe it’s each sadness must burrow
warmly in you or another and all that’s left

at the end of this day is your cats curled in the hallway
the howls of coyotes surrounding their kill, a shadow

dragging across the floor in search of heat.

A version of this poem first appeared in The Meadow.