Help is a Four-Letter Word

Kara Gillies

But I can see his asshole. 

My old cat Wilbur’s butt is pink and prominent. A rosebud stopper holding in the love. 

I have ferried Wilbur downstairs to the makeshift guest room where you lie dying in the rented hospital bed. The cancer once vanquished from your cervix has stormed though your system and found refuge in your rectum.      

It’s disgusting.  

This from the woman with three drawers of sex toys. Anal sex toys. Dildoes and anal beads and butt plugs used on a line of men so long they would writhe up the stairs, out the door and along the pavement if lined up dick to butt. Paying clients or lovers, they all said, Thank you, Mistress, when you were done. 

I place Wilbur on your bed and smile as he butts your hip with his head, purring comfort and camaraderie.   

Ugh. You shoo him away, IV line waving. Can’t you cover his ass? 

With what? I think. 

We all have one, I say. 

But I clean yours, is the truth I don’t say. 

Each day you wrap your arms around my shoulders as you balance on the blue-green bedpan. You strain, I wipe, the morphine drips. 

I can’t look at it. Take him away. You grab the support bar and turn your back to us. 

I scoop up Wilbur, cradling him to my breast. It’s okay, I whisper. 

Later, when you are dead, I replay this memory. Sometimes it helps to be mad at you.

Kara Gillies is a queer former sex worker and current non-profit leader in Vancouver, Canada. She is new to CNF and is dipping her toes into micro and flash.