The Puppy and Kitten Channel
The Puppy and Kitten Channel
Remember
the night I passed my test and the Thai
place where you took me brought my rice pressed
into the shape of a heart, a maraschino cherry
bleeding sweetly on the top? It’s an old story—
once there was an atom who wanted to be
a molecule. I’ve thought a lot about innocence
since then—the sleeping otters floating on their backs
in the aquarium pool, paws linked, the human
presence behind the animal videos on the Internet—
intimate laughter, murmured words in Russian
or Norwegian while puppies lick each other’s faces
or a baby deer eats from someone’s hand. I’ve watched
the puppy and kitten channel. At the Origami Club,
you can learn to make a whole paper world—
origami strawberry shortcake, origami waterbug,
origami chicken, hatching from an egg. Do you ever
feel completely ruined? The man with no arms
and no legs takes an egg into his mouth and drops it
into a bowl, takes a whisk into his mouth and scrambles,
takes the bowl into his mouth and wheels to the stove,
takes a spatula into his mouth and lifts the egg onto a plate,
bits of shell and all. Takes a fork into his mouth. Turns
and grins. Do you feel ruined now? Yes, still ruined,
and guilty. Click again, and a couple laughs gently
as a kitten and a bunny tumble across a flowered rug.
The otters float apart, then back together. The origami
bride smoothes a wrinkle in her immaculate dress.
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