When your stepdaughter warns you not to let her roommate’s cat escape…

by Alexis Rhone Fancher

it’s like she has a premonition.

After she leaves you’ll explore her off-campus apartment,

snoop in her drawers, try on her graduation cap.

You will smoke her dope & drink her last Bud Light.

The two of you have never been close.

You’ll read the roommate’s diary, take notes.

The cat, a tom of indeterminate age,

will rub his thin, orange body against your ankles.

You’ll walk into the bathroom to pee,

gag at the litter box teeming with hardened turds,

avoiding the ones on the floor.

The ammonia of cat piss mixed with

the unmistakable scent of used Kotex pads

will leak into the hall

where it will mingle with four-day old Mexican food

and pizza stuck on plates in the kitchen.

You’ll recall your stepdaughter’s slovenly ways,

how badly she treated you,

how relieved you were when she left home.

The cat will pace, yowling at the bathroom door like Tom Petty.

But when you put him in the litter box, he’ll balk, stare up at you

with marmalade eyes, nudge you toward the front door.

It will be an act of mercy.

Later, you will sit on the stained couch

where you’ll watch reruns of Forensic Files in the fading light,

and wait for your stepdaughter’s return.

Then you will deny everything.

* * * * *

"When your stepdaughter warns you not to let her roommate’s cat escape…" was first published in Tinderbox Poetry Journal (2018)

Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in The Best American Poetry 2016, Verse Daily, Plume, 

Rattle, Literary Mama, Diode, Pirene’s Fountain, Tinderbox, Nashville Review, and elsewhere. 

She’s the author of four poetry collections; How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen and 

other heart stab poems, (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), Enter Here, (2017), 

and Junkie Wife, (2018). A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. www.alexisrhonefancher.com