Walled Garden

For apologetic introverts

Plasma through upturned eyes 
makes concentric lines
twisting around objects unseen,
welding shapes that only I can glean.
Alarmed, my mind wipes them clean:
"Wake up. You're dreaming."

Blue jeans hang limply on a chair.
Evidence that I've stepped outside for the day.
Earning my solitude
Dodging disquietude,
that asks, "Don't you get lonely?"
Never in my own company.

Home. Safely confined, ears tucked inside,
noise-cancelling headphones. I close the blinds
Plasma swirls in halos just beyond sight
A book of unexpected tales lies face down on its spine
Enrobed in caffeinated silence, I come alive
Inside my walled garden. 

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At the start of winter, I set up an outdoor cat house for the neighbour’s orange tabby, who likes visiting our garden and napping on our deck. Imagine my surprise when one crisp morning, I find a fluffy grey interloper all cosied up inside the house, her panther-like glare warning me that she wouldn’t be easily evicted. I left her alone, discovering later that she lived a few doors down. The poor cat wanted some quiet time away from her owner’s new puppy. I eventually removed the cat house so kitty would return to her loving home. She still walks by every morning, surveilling my garden. 

In New Zealand, cats, an introduced species, roam freely, which is a contentious issue given our unique and vulnerable native wildlife. Some conservationists even classify pet cats as pests, advocating for them to be confined at all times or euthanised. A rather unfortunate sentiment, when it wasn't the cats' choice to be brought into our world. 

The life of an introvert can sometimes feel like an unwanted existence in two opposing realities: one where she must either function in society but outside her nature, or function within her nature but outside society. 

Like a cat, the creative introvert who chooses to live by her nature can be polarising; fluffy and sometimes cute, but suspiciously content by herself and doing stuff no one asked for. To exist in a chronically social society, she must earn her solitude as she earns her bread so that, in her stillness, she can discern creation's original rhythm, trusting: 

... that its spark within her will illuminate a path beyond survival, for herself and others in her proximity. 

... that the strange shapes she materialises will someday connect with other shapes emanating from strangers, in a perfectly timed catalysis that isn't for her to predict or understand. She must simply fulfil her part before her time runs out. 
 
... that her nature is not unnatural. She is precisely who she's meant to be. Like a snug mog in a rug, she needs no one's permission but her own to retreat inside her creativity's blazing heat. 

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All photographs taken by author.

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More poetry featuring my feline muse:

Softness [Poem]

Ogdoad [poem]

Threshold Guardian