The Friday Poem

A poem every Friday

Cat

Poets have always responded to war by writing poetry — it’s what we do. Following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on 24th February this year people started sending The Friday Poem their poems about the war — poems about resistance, poems of protest, and poems about specific individuals affected by the fighting. These are stories of courage, grief and hope. We decided to publish some every week as Friday Poems for Ukraine. Here’s ‘Cat’ by Deborah Finding. Slava Ukraini!

Cat

if you want to know the truth
I have never really liked this cat
even though
I will carry it anyway
it has an annoyingly loud miaow
waking you up
when you should have been sleeping
before the bombs did that

I don’t want you to be scared

I will leave things behind
the cat will come with us
so you don’t have to learn about loss yet
say ‘I will see you very soon’ to your father
so you don’t have to learn about loss yet
the cat will come with us
I will leave things behind

I don’t want you to be scared

before the bombs did that
when you should have been sleeping
waking you up
it has an annoyingly loud miaow
I will carry it anyway
even though
I have never really liked this cat
if you want to know the truth

Dr Deborah Finding (she/her) is a queer feminist writer with a background in academia, journalism and activism. Her publications include The Guardian, the Huffington Post, DIVA magazine, and IB Tauris’s ‘Reading Cult Television’ book series. Originally from the North-East of England, Deborah now lives in London. On Twitter she is deborahfinding. On Instagram she is dfinding.

Read this next