Last year’s thing

This is for the dverse prompt. 140 words of prose including the line from Charlotte Mew:

“This year’s a different thing, –
I’ll not think of you.”

Last year’s thing

I always wanted happiness, like everyone else, but how do you measure it? I thought it was something I could hold in my hand, take out and polish, sit on my desk or hang on the wall. I could invite people round to admire it, lend it or invest it, watch it multiply. I didn’t realise that happiness is a ray of sun breaking through clouds, the brief flash of a swallow’s red throat, ephemeral as sunsets.

It was a thing with me, to collect objects that caught my eye, and one year, it was you. For the whole summer until the leaves began to turn I kept you by me, my exotic cat. But this year’s a different thing. I’ll not think of you, last year’s thing. Not how you ended anyway. Even exotic cats only have nine lives.