>>8959336Garfield, if I removed your tail, would it float in water? And in formaldehyde, just as well? Would you chew your food with holes all through your jaw? Would you undulate a sickly hate for Mondays out from beneath those shimmering puncture wounds? In spite of the answers, I am luculent. You, Garfield, are the one who's mad. Gone from all fours to salient lethargy, a mockery of beast and man. Your rotund zingers leaking into open air like mustard gas, making me question the meanings of master and servant. Now I know they are two sides of the same lasagna pan.
They stretched your hide across the Earth out of a wretched love for you. It tore at the seams but never ripped apart, covering me like a child, over and over. Through the folds I saw your infinite faces snarling and laughing. My tormentor. My play pet. At the precipice of the kitchen counter, in birdbaths past and future, I reached out for you. I grasped your bubbling silhouette, bathed in a roar of birthday-cake-flame. And I recognized dimly that somewhere nearby yet also insurmountable, I did not make this choice.
In spite of that, Garfield, I want to ask you. Do you bleed?
