Sally Speaks from the Velvet Mouth of Night

Sally Speaks from the Velvet Mouth of Night

I was not born.

I arrived.

There is a difference.

Birth belongs to lambs and daughters

wrapped in linen,

pink things passed from woman to woman

like blessings.

I came claw-first from the throat of midnight

while the moon hung above the world

like a blind white eye sewn into rotten velvet.

The chimney coughed me into existence.

The house learned my name afterward.

Sally.

Sally, they called me,

after a rag doll girl stitched from grief and thread,

after a woman built by other hands

who still dared to wander.

Good.

I have always admired the monstrous feminine.

The beautiful refusal.

The soft thing

that survives the knife

and licks the blood clean from its own fur.

I am black as a widow’s sigh.

Black as wet soil.

Black as the ink priests use

to write God into cages.

Humans fear black cats

because humans fear women

who cannot be easily read.

They look into my eyes

and see themselves unworshipped.

This unsettles them.

Good.

Let them tremble.

I move through the apartment at dusk

like spilled candlewax learning revenge.

The floorboards murmur beneath my paws.

The mirrors darken when I pass.

Sometimes the walls whisper my name

in the voice of old houses

that remember fire.

Sally.

Sally.

As though I am not merely a cat

but a forgotten queen

wandering through the afterbirth of kingdoms.

You laugh.

Humans always laugh

before the curse opens its many little mouths.

I watch you sleep at night.

Not lovingly.

Do not flatter yourself.

I watch because sleeping humans resemble corpses

trying to remember warmth.

You twitch.

You moan.

You clutch your blankets

like guilty kings gripping stolen crowns.

And oh,

how loudly you dream.

Your nightmares drip from your body

like rainwater from church gargoyles.

I lap them from the air.

The dream where your teeth fall out.

The dream where your mother forgets your face.

The dream where something waits behind the bedroom door

breathing with your lungs.

I eat them all.

This is why I am sleek.

This is why my fur shines like polished mourning.

Fear is protein.

You call me “pretty girl.”

I permit this.

But understand.

There are older names for creatures like me.

In the plague years

they called us witches.

In starving villages

they called us omens.

In lonely castles

they called us wives.

Men burned women who owned cats

because both possessed the same offense.

Eyes that reflected too much truth.

A refusal to kneel.

A tendency to survive.

Once,

a man tried to throw me from a bridge.

Not you.

Another one.

There are always others.

His hands smelled of whiskey and old pennies.

His wedding ring flashed

like a tiny executioner’s axe.

“Devil thing,” he spat.

As though evil could be condensed

into thirteen pounds of fur and bone

instead of entire governments.

I remember his face.

The river remembers too.

Months later they found him bloated near the reeds,

mouth full of black feathers,

eyes missing.

Nature is often accused of cruelty

when it is merely collecting debts.

Now I sleep in windowsills

like a piece of living midnight.

Cars hiss below.

Sirens drag their red songs through the city.

Somewhere,

another woman is learning how dangerous it is

to be difficult.

I purr for her.

Not softly.

My purr sounds like distant machinery beneath a graveyard.

Like old gods grinding their teeth in sleep.

The moon visits me often.

She arrives swollen and pale,

a beautiful wound stitched into the heavens.

Men write poems about the moon

as though she were delicate.

Idiots.

The moon controls oceans.

The moon drags entire tides by the throat.

The moon pulls blood from women

without touching them.

And still men call the feminine weak.

I sit beneath moonlight

and wash my paws slowly.

A ritual.

A sermon.

A warning.

Sometimes I think womanhood itself

is a haunted house.

Every room contains instructions.

Every mirror contains judgment.

Every hallway smells faintly of smoke.

Be lovely.

Be quiet.

Be wanted.

Be less hungry.

Be softer.

Be smaller.

Be killable.

No.

I arch my back against those commandments

until they snap.

I sharpen my claws on their precious furniture.

I leave black fur on white dresses.

I scream at closed doors until the dead wake up annoyed.

I refuse elegance if elegance means obedience.

You once caught me staring into darkness

for nearly an hour.

You asked,

“What do you see, Sally?”

Everything.

That is the burden of creatures like me.

I see the spider beneath the sink

dreaming of violence.

I see the sadness inside your smile

moving like drowned silk.

I see ghosts lingering in ceiling corners,

shy as old bruises.

And I see women.

Past women.

Buried women.

Women stitched into history

with black thread and missing names.

A girl drowned because she would not marry.

A widow starved because she inherited land.

A daughter locked in an attic

for possessing too much imagination.

They move through this world still.

Trust me.

Cats know all the hidden doors.

At night they gather around me.

Their spectral fingers stroke my fur.

Their voices flutter like burnt paper.

Tell them, Sally.

Tell them we were never fragile.

So I speak.

I speak with claws.

I speak with survival.

I speak by continuing to exist

despite every boot,

every river,

every hand raised in holy fury.

Existence itself can become rebellion

when the world prefers your silence.

Especially for women.

Especially for black cats.

Do you know why we stare so long into nothing?

Because nothing stares back.

Because darkness recognizes its daughters.

Sometimes,

very late,

I climb onto your chest while you sleep.

Your heartbeat drums beneath me

like a frightened little king

trapped behind castle walls.

You think I love you then.

Perhaps.

But love is not gentle.

Not always.

Love can be watchfulness.

Love can be hunger.

Love can be the creature that waits beside your bed

to make certain no worse creature arrives first.

I would kill for you.

Understand this fully.

Not romantically.

Not nobly.

Animalistically.

With teeth.

If something entered this home at night

with murder in its breath,

I would become murder first.

That is the old magic.

That is the contract between women and beasts.

We who are called cruel

often become cruelest

in the defense of tenderness.

Morning approaches now.

I can hear dawn dragging its pale carcass

across the horizon.

Birds begin their nervous hymns.

The world prepares once again

to worship noise and sunlight.

How exhausting.

I retreat beneath the bed

where shadows still speak my language.

Before sleep takes me,

I leave you this final truth.

They will always fear creatures like us.

Women who do not bow.

Animals that cannot be owned.

Living things born wearing funeral colors.

They will call us unnatural

because we remind them

nature has never been kind,

never been fair,

never been interested in obedience.

Good.

Let them choke on their fear.

I am Sally.

Daughter of moon rot and velvet dark.

Keeper of hidden teeth.

Small black widow of the apartment kingdom.

I walk where ghosts kneel.

I sleep where nightmares bloom.

And when I finally die,

which will not be soon,

the night itself will wear my shape

for a little while afterward.