Safe
Eventually he was found, fed,
warmed, cleaned, physically
healed, not forced
to do tricks as he thought of them
(which may have included
being made to believe things), not
tricked. But it was too late
(they may have thought but never said);
he never
learned trust. Would not, for example,
be touched. Didn’t
“act out,” grew quieter if anything. Had
his favorite spots. Watched, aged. All
that seemed in the end to matter
was consistency and lack of ambiguity.
I apologize for the latter:
he may have been a cat
or mankind in the cosmos
or one part of the mind in another.