in parentheses

Kat Ray creates illustrated stories about being alive, roadkill, idealism, and everything in between. Kat’s works are somewhere between children’s poetry and grown-up reflections, inspired by everything they love; family, friends, kind strangers, music, opossums, dogs, and life. Kat also enjoys needlefelting chonky cat dolls and giving them away.

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creature’s living funeral

in the woods there lived a stray dog
whom everyone loved very much.

his couch was always open for his
friends to sleep an afternoon, or even evening,
and he baked sugar cookies to bring
to every wednesday book club meeting.
he listened to his friends’ dreams,
and wrote notes and stuffed bags of tea
and pressed flowers and recipes
in the tye-dye painted envelopes,
and he told his friends he loved them
at the end of every letter, call, and visit.

one day, there came a dreadful
wail from his next-door neighbor rabbit’s home,
and the stray was there in a banana split second.
his neighbor’s face was pale and
they lay unmoving on their bed.
the sitting doctor said they would die
as their small intestine was infested
with a mess of mud and sticks and bugs.

without a breath between,
the stray pulled his small intestine out
through a gash he made in his side
and he kept pulling and it piled
outside his frame as his neighbor and
the doctor watched,
and he kept going and going until
his bloodstained paws felt paper rope,
and he found his intestine was now
rainbow clown-ribbon like a magician
and he kept pulling and pulling
until he felt vines, leafy in his palms
palmy, tropical scents and flavors, pollen
collecting on his fingertips.

his neighbor bowed an appreciative nod
as the stray knitted the healthy intestine
inside their belly. the stray whispered
a passing “t’was nothing,”
for it really wasn’t, to him,
and he patted his neighbor on the ribs
and left them resting in their home.

and as he wandered through the town and
corner stores made from mossy stumps
in his wilderness, as he set his paws
on familiar good ground and unknown
lacquered slippery mosaic tiles,
as he walked around the world outside
his woods and neighbors’ homes,
he found want and need from friends and strangers for parts and pieces of himself.
like, the next day, a cat chef needed a new spleen,
to keep cooking macaroni ‘n cheese
and so, sight unseen, the stray handed her his spleen,
and then the next day an owl bus driver needed a new trachea,
to call out stops loud and sing songs on the radio,
and so the stray handed them his trachea.
then the next day a raccoon painter needed a new knee,
to best reach and render the sea on a giant watered canvas,
and so the stray handed him his knee.
then the next day a rat teacher needed a new hand
to point to words and help their class understand,
and so the stray handed them his hand.

he was now a dog skeleton with
threaded plants and vines where
organs and features used to be;
he jumbled-bumbled while he walked
like the almost-end of a jenga game.
he claimed he knew no pain, at
the cautious doubt of his community,
as they guessed an agony in his
winces, missing appendages,
in the absence of all there used to be.
but they were wrong, for at the center,
there remained all he knew he needed.
steadfast in the cradle of his corpse,
his soul stayed, his softly beating heart,
strumming like a whalebone harp,
and he hokey pokeyed along to
its funky holodotted rhythm

then there was a winter storm
where the trees rattled an ominous xylophone solo
and the blue breeze swept fallen leaves into
the dark, vast sea up above. his neighborhood was
cold in snow, bitterly so, so many gathered
about a roaring fire in the central clearing,
crinkling collections of fiery bits dusting into the corners
of their eyes and smiles. they shared stories,
their friend, the stray, at the center,
giving rapt attention to the mousey voices
of those who nearly trailed off to silence,
lending a smile and nod with care,
at each and every breath-filled pause,
to assure them they had words to share
to assure them their speech had cause

yet as the evening twirled along,
something deep within the woods tore the stray away
from the warmth, and his bones jangled as he
found a small bear trembling in the cold
behind an itchy thorny brush, clutching its
chest with right paw and its right shoulder with
its left paw, digging into its skin until
it bled, so as to just feel something, alone.

,it needs a heart,
the stray dog gleamed,
and he thought about it
for maybe a moment
before gouging his heart out
and giving it over.

the lonely stranger brought its eyes up
after an extra sniffle, and as its big paws
enclosed the bleeding beating heart,
as it placed it to the left of its sternum,
as it hazarded a grateful grin,
the stray collapsed, and the stranger shrieked.

he died, then.
that time.
and his companions and the stranger
were overcome with everyone’s grief.
they swam in so many tears that they
thought they’d drown. and they had no
body to bury, as the vines and plants crocheted
what was left of his bones into the soft plush ground.
his friends, disoriented, didn’t know up or down,
didn’t know how to walk or talk or sing anymore,
haunted by the cavernous hole they found.

they did what they could the next day.
they laid out favors on
a massive chestnut table
and cooked a meal for them to share
whatever they were able,
and they talked about his love and care
and tried to keep him alive, still,
keep him around,
but found it hard to do it without him
right there, safe and sound.

they kept a three-day sleepless vigil
with red and crusted dried eyes boring
patterns into the chestnut table
wordless, hungry, parched,
collected and scattered. like an
above-ground catacomb
with an unmoving lifeless family
missing their friend, their love, their home.

then the wine in their glasses started to tremble
and the coins on the table began to dance
and their salt-soaked gazes drew up
as they heard from the horizon
a sound of stomping, jumping,
herds of mended tendons,
of repaired ribs and blinking borrowed eyes
and treasured traded toes and
rows of replaced retina
and a substituted spleen
and his sniffling lone nose.
everyone who’d ever known
and whom the stray had loved
enough to give a part of himself,
had been drawn to reconvene.
they were a fate of stars crossed,
if just for a moment,
only that blessed blessed moment,
that lead them here, without him,
but here, for a celebration of his life
which was now their shared possession.

his friends sprang up and ran
to greet them, as they recognized
their friend, his eyes, his thought,
love and kind spirit and sight, and
embraced the known strangers with
uproarious song.

after a week of pleasant recall of
overwhelming joy, of shared meals
made with the stray’s paws and
words exchanged with the stray’s lungs,
some of the strangers had to depart,
to share themselves, and the stray,
with those who had never known them.

there were tears again, for sure,
but softer ones, the kind that
they could breathe through, and
that the new strangers could wipe
with a moth wing’s delicate care
off their new friends’ cheeks and eyelashes.
there were promises of sending
cake recipes by mail, and of visits
for next year’s spring solstice, and
of attending someone’s art exhibition
once it opens, because they know it will.
in the early morning, the once-strangers,
and some adventurous friends,
followed after the sun into
the sturdy horizon.

the one who had his heart
watched them and thought,
while clutching his chest and feeling
his low-hum strumming,
about the splendor of this
treasure map, pastel crocheted
web in which they were all strung with glass beads
and promised to each other.

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