The black echo of your being opened and closed the door flitted past the corner of my eye and up the stair disappeared. It was real. I saw it. And years later the cat dead but back ran her black echo along the length of the kitchen cabinets in her hurry fussy style and I never saw her again. Maybe the echo only sounds once like a soft bell struck softly the smoke-black figure there for a fleeting second then gone after its owner into the ether of another world.next poem