Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Taylor D'AmicoOctober 09, 2018

        For Cricket, July 1996—February 2017.

“And all their echoes mourn.” – Lycidas by John Milton

I woke with Lycidas on my tongue, and I should have known.
My prayers for my ailing cat and empty womb had become twined
together, his dark fur falling to shadow as the months passed.

In my dream, I had stuttered the name, given it to my newborn, its body
turning to vapor as I stirred. The weekend we read Milton, that elegy
was waiting for me, my cat tottering as he moved toward his bowl

and then, his aching stillness, his labored breaths in my arms. I swaddled him
in linen when he passed, held him to my chest, and went out into the still morning.

My prayers for my ailing cat and empty womb had become twined

More: Poetry / Poems
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

“Pope Francis is the pope of the people,” Rosa de los Ríos told America in Spanish before the funeral Mass. “He is very close to the people.... That’s why he was so loved. People felt he was very close to them.”
J.D. Long GarcíaApril 26, 2025
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy met inside St. Peter’s Basilica ahead of the funeral for Pope Francis on the morning of April 26.
Associated PressApril 26, 2025
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re’s homily for the funeral of Pope Francis.
America StaffApril 26, 2025
The day before he died, Pope Francis made one final circuit through St. Peter’s Square in his popemobile. “That’s my last image of him alive,” Gerry O’Connell remembered. “He drove among the people.”