Afshan Shafi
The following poem is after A Whisker Away, known in Japan as Nakitai Watashi wa Neko wo Kaburu (泣きたい私は猫をかぶる (lit. ‘Wanting to Cry, I Pretend to Be a Cat’). It is a 2020 Japanese animated film produced by Studio Colorido, Toho Animation and Twin Engine. Directed by Junichi Sato and Tomotaka Shibayama, the film was released on June 18, 2020, on Netflix in Japanese. An English-language version was officially released on June 28, 2020, due to production delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Synopsis: A peculiar girl transforms into a cat to catch her crush’s attention. But before she realizes it, the line between human and animal starts to blur.
Cat-body
My previous bodies
Were not unlike a cat’s
floating trunk
(or its histrionic clavicle,
Its tongue barbed
like a sonnetist’s flap)
But for this boy
Who earned his
Pearly slip of a body
In classrooms where
Whispers turned to blades
Under a winter sky,
Discreetly rumpling to bone
‘I hate you,’ he said
When I was in my girl-body
My knees faintly shingled
Like a female Pierrot
‘I am no-body,’ he said
When I was in my cat-body
My eyes kind and plastic-
Sweet Japanese moons.
I drank from a bowl of milk
So pink and immaculate
It was like drinking
From a baptismal cistern.
I left the attitude of a changing body
Behind.
‘I don't deserve any-body,’ he said
After the girl-bodies
Had drawn away to their casements.
His hands moldering
To ivory leather,
His ripe gums, flaming red and blue
Red and blue.
‘I don’t deserve cat-body,’ he said
As his tongue shrank to a
A tawny switch.
‘I don’t deserve cat-body,’ he said
As the hairs on his arms
Rose like airy spines,
Pouring out of his back
In one unceasing, blind wave.
All images are stills from A Whisker Away.