Dog
He’s sitting and writing about his dog’s death in the third person because he hates when people write about tragedy in the first person; he hates when people go on and on about themselves when the text is littered with I and Me and My but he needs to get it out he needs to say something he needs to tell somebody that it hurts it hurts it hurts so bad oh good lord it hurts so bad -- how can you love so much a creature that did so little? A little brown dog who lived to sleep all day and beg for table scraps and trot around the lawn every now and then she was old but she was spry and her body failed her and that hurts most of all if it wasn’t for her body she would’ve been fine she didn’t want to die but she did anyway because her bones betrayed her and he writes about it all sitting on the couch where she would’ve been; writing on the couch where she lay and slept and dreamed the unknowable dreams of a dog and all he can do is write write write and imagine what it feels like to die what it feels like to be a dog and wonder if a dog knows she’s going to die and he prays that she can’t, prays that she couldn’t prays that in some small way there’s something that’s not so terrible about this whole thing. He clicks his pen shut and throws the notepad across the room like it’s a frisbee. He leans forward on the couch, his elbows on his knees and his hands over his eyes and he bawls shamelessly and ferociously because in this empty house he knows there’s no one there to hear it.