All the radiators are speaking to each other.
They burble, they hiss, they speak in secret tongues.
If there is a language to it (and there is) I do not know it.

I know it has secrets — some obvious to figure out;
some less clear and maybe more destructive;
some so far from my knowledge I cannot begin to know.

Meanwhile the cat fountain in the kitchen keeps it up.
A constant burbling, an argument perhaps, maybe just muttering:
the content unclear, the language soothing; the cat pays no mind.

I know it has secrets, mostly in the guise of unformed chatter —
one of them is a pleading: drink me, drink me, please drink from me!
Something like that. As I said, the cat pays no mind.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say the whole house is speaking its mind.
I do know better, of course. Don’t you? Don’t you know
the voice of an inanimate object doesn’t speak words at all —

not to us at any rate. Not to us, not to the animals we keep,
although the cat seems to ignore it all in favor of punching me
in the headside, through the covers, begging me to get up

and tend to her tender needs, her ferocious longing for food
and water and something else: something like understanding.
I deliver something but it’s not strong enough. It never is.

The cat always expects more, of course. It’s in the shoulders,
her back turned toward me on the floor. Get a load of this,
she sighs to the rest of them. He can’t understand a thing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T