Ghost Heart

They conspired to put me in a cage and let me die. My poor, poor, Tiger, the Ersatzanna.

I always weep when I remember what must have happened to you, how you must have cried for help. And he sat there, no more than 20 feet away, and played video games, feeling himself powerful as his avatar crept around toting a machine gun and you died.
Your dear Archie must have come to you and meowed too, he must have tried to get that man's attention and he ignored him too, that loathsome man, the father of my children.
My grandmother was dying that day, and that’s where I was, at her side saying goodbye. It was expected that she would go, but I lost you too, and that should not have happened.

He couldn’t stop hurting. He had to hurt me and I had only wanted to help him. Helpless me, I wanted to help, but he wanted to hurt.
How he could have sat there and not known that you were dying painfully is unimaginable to me. Some part of him knew. He wanted to hurt me more, so he hurt you.
I am so sorry my poor Tiger, little Ersatzanna. He is dead now too, the father of my children, but if I could choose to have just one of you restored to life, I would choose you and not him. Children need kittens more than drunkard fathers.

I felt sorry for him when he shot himself in the head, I felt sorry because he had been hurting, and that’s why he hurt others, I felt sorry that he had suffered, that I could never help him.
But I was never sorry that he was gone. That is one point upon which I can agree with him; the world is better without him. I am better without him.

The world is worse without you, my heart.

I set the cage out there. I did it. My father convinced me it was the only way to protect you.
The neighbors' black cat had bitten you twice and almost killed you. My father bid me to put out the cage for the black cat.
In the morning my grandmother was dying and I forgot to bring in the cage before going to say goodbye. The father of my children did not come with us to say goodbye to my grandmother. It was an uncommonly hot day for so late in the fall.
You wandered into the cage they said would protect you. It killed you. And he sat 20 feet away letting you die.

After I screamed Tiger, after they grabbed hold of my arms to hold me back while I screamed and the unborn baby in my womb covered her ears and screamed too, after they held me up by my arms and I screamed louder and the other baby, the one you helped me to nurse, stared wide eyed and silent, after I screamed and they tried, as always, to silence me, after that Tiger, I promised that I would never listen to my father again.
And I knew, after he, the father of my children, let you die in the cage my father had bidden me to set, I knew that was what was in store for me. My agony would be prolonged by indifference, my pleas would fall forever on apathetic ears.
I would be caged and killed bit by bit. Just as it had happened to you Tiger, my heart.

I never said goodbye to you. I don’t even remember what they did with your body.
So I dream that you’ve come back, that you’re there playing with your Archie or running alongside the overgrown mint, streaking past a window.
I am overjoyed to see you so, as you were, as you would still be if you had not gone in my place, little Ersatzanna.
My Tiger, ghost of my heart, I see you rushing along the shadowy edges of my dreams, but I cannot touch you, cannot scoop you up, cannot call you back into the house for safe keeping against the night.
I cannot press you to my chest where you belong safe and warm, small brave Tigress.
So I watch you through the window, stalking through the shadows as dusk deepens, as forgetfulness fades and I remember everything.

Intelligent Life

We would not know it if an intelligent life form or species of life forms was attempting to contact us even if they were. We lack the openness and unbiased power of observation that would allow us to perceive intelligence in an organism or system which was not very much akin to ourselves in physicality and ideology, but neither of these attributes signify intelligence in and of themselves.
Consider that as human beings we have been unable throughout the course of our brief history on earth to grant that other human beings who were physically different from us and whose language and culture varied from our own were equal in intelligence to ourselves. We have been unable to recognize intelligence in others of our own species. We have denied them freedoms, taken advantage of their perceived weaknesses, abused and tortured them, and only now, in the 21st century, are we beginning to consider it politically incorrect to assume supremacy based on race, and that is still up for private consideration in the minds of many. As long as the bigotry can be thinly veiled, it will still be granted entrance into mainstream politics and our day to day interactions. Supremacy based on creed yet runs rampant and no consideration whatsoever is given to the notion that our philosophies, our ideas and habitual mind sets are not inherently worthy, they are just ours.
We as a species may not even be adequately equipped to interact in a meaningful way with an intelligence functioning on a vastly different level than our own. For example, something could be transmitting a message to you right now, but, without the appropriate aperture to receive that message, it will go, metaphorically speaking, right over your head. Forget that what we consider a message and what we consider intelligence may not in fact be very intelligent or ripe with meaning in a more universal context.
We are not alone in our ability to self perpetuate and colonize, we are only unique in some of our methods, in the applications of certain tools. Are we really better than all the other life forms present upon this planet because of our linguistic skills and cognitive reasoning? Perhaps these are aberrations more than special qualifications.
Evolution functions via mutation, and that mutation which caused our Cro-Magnon ancestors to beat out (possibly even violently, contributing to the course of their extinction) the Neanderthals may be the cause of our isolation. We perceive ourselves as being alone in the universe because we are mutants, creations with an deviant consciousness that has been cut us off from the rest of the cosmos. Skills that have allowed us to flourish as hunters and conquerors, have usurped abilities that would make contact with intelligent systems possible. We may be the psychopaths of the natural world, deaf to the voices of those that we crush, unable to feel the harm we cause ourselves through the course of our conquest, because we are somehow neurologically damaged.
Our cunning, our breed of intelligence, may be our Achilles heel; the secret to our success and our debilitating weakness. We are surrounded by life, by organisms and systems which behave intelligently, which reach out to us with soft tendrils of warmth and light, speaking to our disabled senses, the senses that we have written off as nonexistent. The hardware may be there, but the software is damaged, infected by a virus that we have misnamed intelligence.
We have supposed that our own abnormal consciousness is the real deal, and that the rest of the universe is cold and dead, but it is the other way around. Our primary waking consciousness is cold and dead, and all of those things which we have considered beneath us from that vantage point, are in fact vibrant, and primal, they comprise the true kingdom which has been patiently awaiting our return.