"Please Take Care of My Kitten, my Darling"

The one I love abandoned me.
She left me all alone in a cardboard box.

It was wet
and cold
in that December night when she did so,
as if the needles of rain would freeze where they fell,

and my box
(which I was left in)
became soggy with empty hopes
divorcing themselves from the sky.

I was nothing more than a mewling kitten, back then;
the box seemed ten feet tall and stretched upwards to the heavens;
it was bigger than me, and I was dwarfed by its might,
trapped, crying, and with fur that became sodden.

I was small,
vulnerable,
and kept apart from the world
by the walls of some odd container
(my box).

And try, try, and try as I might,
I was nothing more than a rabbit
trapped
in a snare,
a lonely, falsely accused prisoner.

For you see, at first, when I came to,
and found myself within that box
I clawed frantically
at its walls
with my little kitten claws,
and called for a savior to take me out of it
and adopt me;

no one ever came.

So I waited
and waited
--I could do no more than that--
and time crept onwards in my limited world.

Slowly, the stars
were fleshed out of the deep,
indigo night,

little flecks of hope
that were too far to touch.

I wondered if I would ever
be free
or happy
again,
and thought of the one I had loved.

The morning came, and the day passed, and
the next night arrived.
Still no one had come, and the stars
were still too far away.

The next morning came, and
the next day passed, and
the next night arrived.

Still no one came.
The stars were intangible,
and the pattern repeated
again and again.

Months, years;
all remained unchanging,
and I matured, an abandoned kitten into
a forsaken cat,
with hardened claws and
sharpened, bleached-white fangs.

One night,
as I lay
in the familiar, cramped space,
a shooting star crash-landed
atop of my kitty head.

I blinked
and yowled in surprise
upon impact;
I winced for a moment,
and I got a bit hurt.

But when I recovered,
I was amazed to see:
a star!
In my box!
A star I could reach!

It was beautiful
and round,
and though it had caused some pain
it proved to be sacred and precious indeed,
even more so than the first night they were visible.

And with that fallen star came,
to my shocked delight,
a warm, loving person
in that warm summer night.

She was different
and kind,
and reached with outstretched hands;
she picked me up and took me out of the box.

The fallen, brilliantly shining
star
illuminated
all within my line of vision.

That beautiful person gave me a home her heart
--by some strange and unlikely miracle-- and,
I worried no longer about the troubles of the past.

But just for a moment,
for a brief, solitary moment,
I thought of that gone, lovely face...
and wondered if she had ever loved me.

As we walked away from my prison,
me and my savior,

I looked back and saw a note attached
to the box.

"Please take care of my kitten, my Darling,
Please take care of my Love."