The Old Man at the Window and the Immortal Cats

April 8th arrives
with the hush of a page
that turns itself.

In the big window
the one that frames the world
like a painting too honest to sell
an old man sits,
chewing a piece of old bread
as if time itself
were something he could soften
with patience.

He does not speak.
He never does on the 8th.
Words would only clutter
the delicate machinery
of the morning.

Instead, he watches.
The street,
the sky,
the drifting dust,
the slow ballet of shadows
moving across the floorboards.

And beneath his breath,
in the silence between chews,
he makes a wish
so small,
so stubborn,
so impossibly human
that even April pauses
to listen.

He wishes
for the cats
never to die.

Not his cats
he has none.
Not any particular cat
he has loved too many
to choose.

He wishes it for all of them:
the strays that haunt the alleys,
the queens curled in sunlit windows,
the toms with torn ears
and arrogant hearts,
the kittens who believe
the world was built
for their paws alone.

He wishes immortality
for every whiskered creature
that ever blinked slowly
at a human
as if offering
a tiny, wordless blessing.

It is a foolish wish,
a tender wish,
a wish that smells faintly
of bread and memory.

But April 8th
is a day that honors
foolish tenderness.
It collects such wishes
like feathers,
tucks them into the folds
of its mythic coat,
and carries them forward
into the days that follow.

The old man keeps chewing.
The window keeps shining.
The world keeps pretending
it is not moved.

And somewhere,
in a place the old man
will never see,
a cat stretches,
yawns,
and lives
one more day
because someone,
somewhere,
wished it so.