Heartbeat
by Elizabeth Du, Lauriston Girls’ School
Finalist, Years 7 – 8, performance poetry
I see you, Black cat, sitting on spindles
Atop our tall fence
All muted paws and graceful moves
Like the spindles don’t hurt you at all
On the border of our mansion, on the border of society
Black cat, you greet me every day after school
Always there, a dusk-eyed stranger
Do you go to school? Do you have a future?
Black cat, do you have a family? Do they feed and love you? Were you part of a clan?
I don’t want to see you here tomorrow
You can’t keep waiting for my acceptance
The more that I don’t see you, the more I can pretend that you have someone out there
Black cat, at school I’m learning things
The heart pumps blood with ventricles and atriums–Interesting how it works
Do you have a heart like us? Of course you do—they just don’t teach people about it
Black cat, people at school don’t understand us
He said animals don’t feel.
But just like you and your unspoken words
Crows, wolves, foxes, bats, snakes, rats—They have heartbeats. They matter
Black cat, has anyone every told you that you look like fall?
That if I stood in the middle of an orchard and used the colours that I saw to paint on a canvas
Somehow you would appear
Because it lives in your countenance
The way you look at me with calmness
Like golden leaves descending to the ground, like angles from heaven
A shard of this season lives in your knowing eyes
Those marble disks. A cornucopia of yellows and greens
What’s the word? Lime green. Bottle green. Jade.
No, there’s no way to describe them.
Your colour palette is unique. Shades of autumn coalesce to form a painting
Am I the only one who sees you in this light?
Black cat, this season is beautiful
Look at this puddle. Autumn has splattered it with periwinkle blues and ambers and silvers
A bit of cerulean sky folds one corner of the puddle. And leaves caress its surface like handprints
Come here, black cat, look at our reflection
You’ve grown a little, but your silence is louder today
Why are you looking at yourself so sadly? Does it remind you of someone else?
Black cat!Hey—
Don’t run away into the night
You disappear so easily, like you were tailored from night velvet
I like our conversations. Don’t leave me here
Black cat—oh, black cat, Where have you gone?
In your absence all I notice is you, You’re everywhere, omnipresent, mirrored
In faded photographs, unseen in years
Along the contours of a fallen leaf
In the slump of a homeless man
Amid the wings of a flockless goose
In the echo of a name mispronounced everyday
Sitting in the stubborn bloom of a flower,
breaking through cracked concrete
In the bleached blanket that swallows your season,
his frost creeping over fields once golden
Everywhere. Nowhere. I see you, black cat
Want to read more poems? Explore the other Years 7 – 8 finalists.