Poem: "Missing"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem came out of the July 4, 2017 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired and sponsored by Shirley Barrette. It also fills the "asexual" square in my 5-29-17 card for the Pride Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the Schrodinger's Heroes project.


"Missing"


There are a few things
missing from Schrodinger's life:

two fuzzy lumps under his tail,

the special deliciousness
in the scent of a queen in heat,

yowling romance in the moonlight
and getting his black ears bitten
to shreds by his rivals,

litter after litter of kittens
that he brought into being.


There are a few things
missing from Schrodinger's life,
but his identity is not one of them.

It is something he found,
instead of something he lost,
as when a sculptor removes
everything that is not the statue.

He is asexual but still affectionate;
his humans are the center of his world,
and even without a common language
they know this as well as he does,
because they call themselves

Schrodinger's Heroes.


There are a few things
missing from Schrodinger's life,

but he doesn't miss them a bit.

Comments

[technoshaman]

*smiles*

I finally figured something out. It isn't that my kitteh hears my key in the lock and comes running. She hears me WAY before that, while I'm down below on the walk, and meows a near-continuous greeting until I reach the top of the stairs, then pauses in anticipation.

I'm surprised Schrodinger hasn't taught the Heroes at least *some* rudiments of Cat. Both my inky companion and the distaff sides' tuxedo permakitten have made special effort to teach us certain subtleties about their vocabulary... f'rex, the tuxkitten chirps or prrows greetings and such like, but "feed me" is a clear, un-purred meow, looking directly at the potential feed-er, it's *very* distinctive... (I seem to recall it's pretty clear that Shrodinger does *understand* English...? )

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I finally figured something out. It isn't that my kitteh hears my key in the lock and comes running. She hears me WAY before that, while I'm down below on the walk, and meows a near-continuous greeting until I reach the top of the stairs, then pauses in anticipation. <<

Yay!

>> I'm surprised Schrodinger hasn't taught the Heroes at least *some* rudiments of Cat.<<

He probably has. Also they get turned into cats, so there should be some carryover.

>> Both my inky companion and the distaff sides' tuxedo permakitten have made special effort to teach us certain subtleties about their vocabulary... f'rex, the tuxkitten chirps or prrows greetings and such like, but "feed me" is a clear, un-purred meow, looking directly at the potential feed-er, it's *very* distinctive...<<

"Come, kittens, I have brought food" seems to be a pretty consistent "err-ROW, err-ROW" across mother cats.

>> (I seem to recall it's pretty clear that Shrodinger does *understand* English...? ) <<

He seems to, yes.