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enjoy this Kyle Hemmings writing in the free Down in the Dirt Tax Day 2011 PDF file chapbook Cat People				You can also order this as a 2011 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the cover spread for the book Cat People

Order this writing in the book 1,000 Words (the 2011 prose collection book)		get the short poem 226 page collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Star Mother

Kyle Hemmings

    As a child you clung to walls, stumpy fingers turning to claw-and-ball or cautious paw. Running your hands over walnut wood, its veneer and lacquer, you traced the curves of scallop shells, scrolls in Braille, Ping dynasty servant girls serving tea. What you didn’t know, your father, master and commander of sash windows and gingerbread calamities, filled in the blanks. Then, one day, you couldn’t hear your mother scream from her version of darkness. But you had a cat’s sixth sense of events on the horizon. Your father placed your fingertips over his cracked lips, explained it like this: Your mother was a faraway star, perhaps, the sun. The sun fell into the sea. All the things you said to him in the dark turned into a tall stranger who had no concept of light. When you turned beautiful, your sight partially restored, he followed you everywhere, groping like a fugitive. You turned and asked him Are you my father, the one I had before the house burned down, the one I cried over for years? He turned and stumbled. You helped him up, noting the terribly scarred one eye, the splat black. From that point on, you became his walking cane, as he walked in reverse. Until you became his last words.

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