Sightlines

There are lines around what we see and what we don't. This has nothing to do with whether it exists.

Whether or not the cat took up space on the sidewalk didn't determine whether we saw her. The human, either.

Really seeing something implicates us in it. Another word for this is witnessing.

Seeing throws coins into the situation. Often more than we'd like.

It asks us to have a small shelf somewhere — a place where the existence of the other can go.

The street cat. The person sleeping in a doorway. The thing we walked past yesterday.

This just happened to me. A kitty on my block who seemed to see me back.

My gaze shifted. Now she's sitting next to me.

But I keep thinking about all the other homeless cats.