My cousins and I belly scoot across linoleum, 
breath sucked in. Who’d first reach his feet,
slide off his L.L. Beans—big as fall’s magnolia
leaves—then like walruses’ paddle-slide to a hide-
out where breath would stall, mouths locked. O,
the eagerness of suspense, Would he wake, Would
he grab us? And who would first feel the backside
of his slipper against a tender rump, who’d cry,
Let me be? It wasn’t me? Legs flailing mid-air.
Did his warning sting more than the slipper’s sole?
I’ll not tell. It was me who snagged his slipper.
                        

How often has a cat eloped with a dog
much to the chagrin of aunts and grandparents alike?
 
Sometimes a thing festers, what’s commonplace less so,
newsfeed more contentious.
 
The dog might be in her igloo grinding up dream bones,
the cat soaking rays on the chaise.
 
For all we know or thought we knew
happiness walks barefoot summertime,
 
arms freely swinging. Don’t be difficult, I tell myself
when attempting to reveal odd possibilities.
 
So, when the cat slapped the priest’s signature
onto the marriage certificate, nabbed the dog and flew off

to Honolulu, don’t be surprised that the pilot let each try their hand
(or paw, in this case,) at guiding American Airlines onto the landing strip

where the dark spread its oilcloth, the cat, a mischievous look,
telling the dog, A peach is a peach because it can’t be an apple.