King Cappy does not have CoVID for the third time. His migraine is with us this AM. As is his spotted eye mask. He’s inside on his recliner. I brought him his coffee, with Truvia and French Vanilla International Mills Shot added. He apologized for being broken. He asked me not to make the cup too full since with the eye mask he wouldn’t be able to see when to start drinking.
We put up the outdoor umbrellas yesterday. Partially. They’re gently mismatched. The heavier umbrella rises from a square slab that lies flat on the courtyard with embedded wheels on one edge and a cut out for handling on the other, like older fashioned stationary bikes with those sort of kickstand transports. A mechanism that looks more efficient than it is. Industrial bronze, single tier putty-colored spoke shade.
The second umbrella weighs less and stands on stands on a raised wheeled platform no less cumbersome to move than its flatter fellow. It’s a bit taller and the peplum is flocked once, and the middle seam has separated from its skirt so both circles of umbrella lie gingerly upon the extensible ribs. Light and birdsong and heat seep through the tear.
My cat is hunched on the tips of his paws in ready inaction. With the umbrella opened he cannot see the sky that teems with tweets and cheeps and trills, nor the toothsome prey that sing these songs. Still, beneath our canopy. Want steeps.
Flies crisscross the cat’s marble ruff. I think of Ethiopia. Kola skin. Vultures. Clavicles. Being widowed on a trailer park porch for the seventeenth consecutive year. Insect legs. Gentle incidental Rockettes. That last chance to be touched, by death, like life.