The Cat and The Snake

My body is cold.

My fingers, frostbitten and blue.

The hairs on my arms protrude upwards, bumps litter my sugary skin.

I see each breath I take fogging the air and the window in front of me.

I peer inside, a fire ablaze of the house.

The walls melt to the floor, wooden planks slowly crackle in the cold winter night.

 

Inside are a snake and a cat.

The cat, watches me freeze from its perch inside, surrounded by the fire.

It could invite me in, or it could escape to the outside,

yet it stays inside with the snake.

 

Smoke fills the house and the window becomes impossible to see through.

I cry for the cat trapped inside, but the snake, I do not.

The only thing I wished of the snake was that it did not exist in my reality.

 

The gentle, sly presence of the cat leaves my reality for another as the snake escapes the burning house.

I watch as it turns back to look, to contemplate, and proceeds onwards.

 

The stars above me slowly disappear as smoke fills the sky.

I lie in the snow, watching them deplete.

The numbing feeling of my fingers and the bumps on my arms slowly spread over the rest of my body,

my heart pumping violently and my lungs breathing shallowly.

 

The snake returns with a dog this time, the house but a glowing ember.

They rest themselves on the only uncharred object of the house,

the perch behind the window I peer through.

 

The dog, oblivious, will remain loyal.

I call yet it stays.

I think to myself, I wish that cat had realized the snake was not it’s friend, nor its foe.

To the snake, the cat was but a pawn. 

 

This poem is about: 
Me

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