flash nonfiction by angela townsend

Infinity in Winter

Christmas comes, and I miss my cat. I will not bear a child. I awoke, still dreaming of Pippa.

I work for a cat sanctuary. My title is Development Director, but my calling is narrator and fool. I make the case for a cathedral built low to the ground. 

My friends, wild-eyed and inky, came to this job without apology. They erupted from wombs on four feet, claiming their place among the animals. Rescue is their full reason. They love people better than the righteous in a thousand churches. They scowl at their secret. They carry on, bearing one-eyed beasts on their backs.

I am an accidental shelter, a lean-to of purposes that didn’t stick. I am a cowardly writer using cats as my cipher. I am a chaplain without a collar. I held my Master of Divinity degree up to stained glass. I could not stifle a giggle. I was never ordained, only bewildered. I limped into a cat sanctuary and took a job. I was unqualified. No one has realized it yet. I try to tell them.

Christmas comes, and my friends smile in my eyes. I am the religious one. The tech with the half-moon tattoo and the director, who describes himself as “Buddh-ish, if anything,” have cleaner lungs than mine. The word for Spirit means “breath.” I fumble on the floor with stale incense.

 There are cats down there, which is why I’m still here. They are comfortable with runaways. I smuggle Psalms into blogs about litter. I ask donors to raise the sum total of love in the universe. I am not fooling anyone.

I am not twenty-six, the age when the shelter took me in. I still wear a tutu to the Christmas party and cry when Frank Sinatra sings, “Through the years, we all will be together / If the fates allow.” I still believe.

No one warns you how much you can miss an animal. Seminary alumni get embarrassed. No one at the shelter looks away when I say that Pippa was white as wool and covered in eyes. I do not add that I am describing Bible angels. They caused people in two testaments to “fall down as though dead.” Pippa kept vigil over my treacherous body. She slept in my arms. She became enraged without apology. She met the man who wrote and then erased the infinity sign.

Christmas comes, and I tell myself the only fee for love is grief. The only balm for grief is love. I write down things that help other people. They email me encouragement and become my friends.

I did not ask for this Möbius strip. I demand that God grant me infinity. I do not specify. I dream of Pippa winding around my ankles, etching eights.

Sixteen years have trundled four thousand cats through the sanctuary. No one told me to write an obituary for every cat who dies. I demand that I bear witness to every life. 

God gives me people, a caravan holding the ends of tails and the tips of fingers. I am paid to keep us solvent, not to become pen pals with the ten-dollar donor whose husband died. I put her birthday on my calendar. I do not need a collar.

When I can’t sleep, I read things I understand only scantly. I read about buttresses that are less about flight than weight. I read about neutron stars that could swallow the universe. I read about bioluminescence. I tell my mother I am the iridescent squid at the bottom of the ocean. I hide. I serve a purpose. You can find me on the floor. I still believe.

Christmas comes, and my pancreas pulls out the storybook. I was diagnosed with “the bad kind” of diabetes at nine. It has been thirty-three years without gingerbread. I assumed I would make it for someone else. My mother has given away the cookie cutters shaped like camels. I tell elderly volunteers my secrets. They understand Pippa monitored my blood glucose.

I read about telomeres, little shoelace caps that help cells divide. Since my name got loose, I only wear slip-in shoes made for old women. I do not have to bend down. I have no laces. I do not divide. My telomere burneth at both ends, it will not last the night. If I lower my stress, my telomeres will grow long as whiskers. I ask God to let my mother outlive me.

I dream of moving to Paris at fifty, packing up my insulin pump supplies and the cats who cannot be Pippa. I breathe deeply when I am half-awake, sketching an infinity tattoo for my ankle. I am dependent. I still believe.