by Dave Malone

Every night a stray cat sleeps in my car’s wheel well. Her mother’s unknown, her father unknown, and she alone holds reign over the back lot and the kingdom of my car’s tires and hood, her dusty paw prints a stamp of her royalty, a coin washed away only when rain falls. She won’t come near me though I’ve pledged fealty and bring her Friskies, tuna, and leftovers. She eats them up when I’m not kneeling. She yowls in the night when she’s deeply frightened, when she thinks I’m sleeping.

Dave Malone (he/him) is a poet and playwright from the Missouri Ozarks. Recent work appears in Science Write Now, Skipjack Review, and Delta Poetry Review.