"Two Cats and a Cigarette"

**found in the waiting room of the health office, in a small red book with a bridge-like drawing on the front and "Small Press Collective" 1993 (I think this is the correct information) in the corner.**

In the large, dark living room of our New York apartment, my Dad can sometimes be found sitting in the shadows, playing the piano. One night, not too long ago, I sat just behind him, perched on the stairs in the near dark and I do not know if he knew I was there. Oh, but the sad, sweet waltz, the beautiful floating notes, the way his fingers stroked the keys, his eyes closed, and his grey head dipping slightly to the music, and so beautiful my Dad, so sweet, and I cried silently, and listened to the music, and felt the tears roll down my face. And my Dad did not know that two feet behind him, his son was crying.

There's a point when you realize how sad and beautiful that love really is. The tired, peaceful features of my Dad. He has no idea how much I love him. And how can I tell him? how can I show him? how could I ever make him know, make anyone know, how much I love? So much. I love so much and yet it is caught up in me, this love: caged as if it were a beast and perhaps it is, but beasts were meant to run wild, to burst out from the shadows at passersby of the jungle of life. And this love has been locked up for so long, nowhere to put it, nowhere to let it go, so afraid to love, to let myself just love, to let it all go and cry and cry and let my Dad see those tears, let him know those tears are tears of love for him, for his beauty, for his own sad beast of love that seeps out in a tired smile or the way his fingers float over the keys. We are all just locked away love, love locked in love and fear of love and love love love...

Sad, sweet love
So hard to hug
one's self.
***
excerpt from
-Two Cats and a Cigarette
by Taylor Plimpton


Thankyou Taylor, for writing in clear images what myself and at least one of my friends have been longing for words to describe.