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They come in packs, single file, and don't keep a schedule.
Out of the dark into the orange light of the patio,
they take shape like a blooming polaroid:
red eyes, body parts missing, until
they crawl with wet paws onto the cracked cement, and begin.
The old woman watches from the dining room,
Sitting upright in a high-backed chair,
Packed into her quilted robe and rubber-soled slippers
by a nurse who left hours ago.
She's worn a path in the carpet
from her bedroom to this chair,
because when you're eighty,
and alone, and don't need much sleep anymore,
it's okay that the best thing in your life
is watching raccoons eat dried dog food.
She's been feeding them for twenty years,
Watching them gnaw kibble in their ratty paws,
Eyeing her between servings
Without thanks or fear or even curiosity.
Indifferent.
She focuses instead on their lumbering,
their fur, how the skinny one might have lost that ear,
how they rotate a piece of kibble,
like a child with corn on the cob.
These days she wakes to less light.
Now her legs are at the glass.
The nurse has pulled the bowl up to the door,
before she fills it, and leaves for the day.
For three nights, the old woman rocks her
body, comforting herself,
If she could hear the rustling,
The nibbling, the raking of kibble,
That would do.
But she had the screen taken out three years ago,
To see more clearly.
She rocks. Then rises, slowly.
Weak knuckles and a heavy sliding door
take time. She rests every inch or so.
The air is cold.
She has come too close.
The first few nights, under slabs of blankets,
She hears nothing.
Then the scratch of claws on pavement, cautious but wanting.
Now right up close,
Not nearly as quiet as she had imagined.
Their noises are not cute,
or adorable, or amusing.
There are no more rhythmic movements.
Teeth cut against a hard surface.
When all those claws rake the bowl,
It echoes in the night.
Sometimes they make guttural noises.
Noises not like anything.
The same packs came again,
only she can't see well enough to count them,
or tell one from another.
She is scared. After all this time,
she is afraid of them,
of the only thing that brought her pleasure.
She rocks forward then back, forward then back
The rutting and squealing and scraping.
She shoves her padded self against the door,
blankets tangling her feet,
she leans in, and presses the lever to lock it.
In the dark silence, she couldn't even play them
back on the old screen, like a silent movie she'd seen every night
for twenty years.
She fingers the satiny hem of her robe.
The wood of the crossrail dug into her back.
She makes her way back to bed, and tries to sleep.
She cries.
She tells the nurse
not to buy any more heavy sacks.
That night they scratched at an empty bowl,
then claws scraped the glass.
She sits up in the chair, frightened,
in her robe and slippers,
because there is nothing else to do,
but think of the beasts outside,
who want to feed.
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