Nen G Ramirez

Moving in

“I don’t mean to cause alarm

but I think there’s an alligator in the basement,”

I tell my mother on our first day spent

scrubbing what was once our home,

then her ex-husband’s,

and now ours again.

So my mother creeps down

creaking stairs, shines

iPhone flashlight

into the dark cavity of a house

that once again

feels haunted.

Yes, he moved in a different woman

with new kids who resented him

in new ways,

left the carpet

with new stains.

She takes a good long look

when she finds it in the corner

and texts the man who once loved her

Did you lose a cat?

He says a kitten ran away,

but that was years ago.

She lifts the thing

by its rigid tail:

mummified, yellow, scaled, 

and two feet

long at least.

This isn’t

a kitten

anymore.

And her heart shrivels at the thought

of the man she loved before

(she learned to prepare liver for him,

started wearing seatbelts, even)

living life with his family of strangers:

slamming doors, breaking dishes,

burning dinner, oblivious

to the kitten.

Trapped, too weak

to scratch,

in the dark turning

into cat and then corpse 

and, now, alligator.

And the man thought 

it was free, probably

even happy, running the streets

and fucking in parking lots,

if he ever really

thought of it

at all.

Emma Catherine Perry