Where do we keep the cats, who slink
out from under the sofa after
we move in, all boxes
unpacked broken down flat,
everything we knew we had
stored on orderly shelves
hung up by color in the closets,

where do we keep those cats, that whine
outside the bedroom door in the morning,
crying to be fed? The cats who show up
one day out of the past, wearing no tags,
demanding love, like prodigals
of another's life?

Where do we keep the cats that sneak
into the back of the moving van, the cats
thought abandoned when we left
everything we no longer needed and all
that we never wanted, the cats
we'd named in childhood and tried to forget
for years? When we wake up
at 3:30 am to a room lit by hungry yellow eyes,
and can't get back to sleep, where do we keep
the cats who stalk our darkness?

-Kelly Vaughan, June 2001
Puddinghouse Press featured my poem in their "Here's the Title, You Give Us the Story" challenge.