I called my mother with the news on a cold November night, and she rushed down forty floors of cold apartment steel with the tiny shovel and gloves in her hands before I could hang up properly. When she arrived, panting, all I could do was point at the cats’ nest. I remember being sent to wash my hands, the battling scents of deteriorating flesh and cheap lavender swirling down the drain. I remember the grimy mirror, the way I looked as I told myself over and over that this was bound to happen someday. When I returned, my mother was holding a small, stiff bundle wrapped in a red blanket. And as she lowered the cold form into the hoary ground, the tears finally burst from my eyes- I crumpled in front of the small grave, unable to form words but begging his name over and over in the small prison of my clenched hands.

His name was Mang-gae. I named him after a sort of rice-cake for his round, scrunched-up orange face. It was an ugly name, the type that stood for longevity. As the harvest moon swelled, I learned his face: the pink nose, the high forehead, the delicate stripes on the back of his head. I learned his habits- the pleased quirk of his tail, the arch of his back after a long nap. I would watch him battle a cardboard box for hours on end, wishing every day to speak to him as he rolled on the ground.

Now the sun sets over a different continent for me, and the shadows curl like tongues of blue smoke as they lengthen. The colors have inverted themselves, but it is as if he- or I- has never left. Every summer sunset I spent with him bled scarlet into the shadows, but now I know that light was never the sanguine vermilion of a summer day but the blooming warmth of a heartbeat against my hand. To enjoy the company of a creature unable to speak was precious beyond what human speech could offer. He changed my world solely with his acknowledgment of its existence.

To look at a feather and think of someone who won’t be able to remark on it- to see a torn sleeve and automatically replay the night it tore before your eyes. To remark to a faint scar from a claw that maybe it ought to stop fading. To wonder if I live on where he is. To wonder out loud to a bare grave if the hours I spent with you meant the same to you and know the answer before my tears hit the earth. To have held a life in my hands, then held only the prison of clay. I pushed my feet against the ground and begged the name that now meant nothing but a wrinkled, cheap rice-cake. Why had I ever named you for longevity? The dirt kept settling over the red blanket, over and over and over.

It felt necessary at the time to stammer out a prayer. I wish for you to be happy, I wish for you to have all your little joys- cat snacks, neon toys, cardboard boxes rimmed with yellow tape. My prayer sounded misshapen as it fell over the soil, and now I think I may understand.

You were many things- none of them spoken, many of them simply felt. And when I leave my body behind as you did yours, I should like to linger as you did- not as clumsy words misplaced in crumbling soil, but as the fading light of a summer day: inexpressible in words yet blooming in syllables of faint touch.