infection

i'm gasping
for breath and you moan alongside
me, push your sleeping head into
my neck like a cat
rubs the one
who feeds it. i don't know
how i caught your fickle feline fancy exactly
but i'd lay odds you're also
drawn by what you can't have.
miaow.
i'll pet you anyway, in my stilted
sort of manner.
if my pores
would just open and breathe
for me i'd join you
on that pillow and stop
rasping through my half-
closed throat but
every method tried
thus-far's a failure, and i have to admit
there's a certain satisfaction
to watching you sleep. there's magic,
somehow, in the still hours. the night
even sleeps, the dead leaves
catching catnaps on their branches
before tomorrow plummets them
to the pavement.
and over
and over i ask myself: what
keeps me? why
am i staying?