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Old Dogs
We watch each other through the screen, your head cocked like a curious puppy, knees knocking like a newborn fawn. How cruel old age is in its mockery of youth. In the sunlight your fur glows golden and I would hardly know that it’s almost time but it is. It’s almost time. Last week your legs buckled. Last night you wouldn’t eat. Today you seem a shell of yourself, three paws already in the grave. I confess I did not love your sister well. When gray flecked her brown muzzle, when cataracts clouded her amber eyes, when her ribs began to show, I turned away. Death is no beauty queen. It comes in bald patches and fleshy moles and ear infections that mimic a stroke. It was hard to look at her. What does it say about me that I would cringe away from you, simplest of creatures, easiest to love? Who else will I abandon in their age of decline? My mom, if she loses her hearing? My dad, if he loses my name? Myself, if my feet can’t carry me back and forth across the hardwood floor? Summer is the season of decay and my mind is a miasma of fear and shame. And yet— Your tail still wags despite everything. Thump-thump-thumping in the grass. How easily joy finds you even now. So I whisper my sins in your floppy ear knowing you would forgive me if you had any idea that I could do wrong. Some say your kind safeguard the dead. Cerberus and psychopomp, guiding souls across the river to whatever happens next. Perhaps you will come back for me. I’ll listen for the thump-thump-thump of your tail as the thump-thump-thump of my heart goes quiet. Off-leash, tongue lolling, paddling against the current with no pain to slow you down. It is hard to look at you, but I keep looking anyway, for my sake as much as for yours.