watermark ovenbird It’s the dog I miss when I’m gone. I start missing him before I go–his fur sleek and silver like a seal’s, velvety soft where he bares his belly to my hand; his fervent eyes that he saves for me; his paw that he places on my knee each morning. I pick him up and measure the shape of him with my arms, wonder if he’ll fit in my backpack. Leaving him behind is an exercise in irrational torment. He’s just a dog. Or so I’m told. Just a curl of bones on the bed, breathing softly, ears folded close to his head. I can’t stop reaching out to touch the warm flank of him. I don’t know how to explain the fact that he’s more real than almost everything else in this world: always there, always so perfectly alive. It was a mistake to love like this, I know. I put a piece of myself in a body that won’t last more than fifteen years (and five have already flown, though I don’t like to think of it.) Every time I leave, even if just for a short while, I imagine the possibility of never seeing him again, and I test the water of a world without him and find it inhospitable to life (to my life). So as I pack my suitcase I sit alongside anticipatory grief, and my dog is there to lick at the salty cataract cascading down my face. His nose leaves a messy smudge on my glasses. I consider leaving it there so when I look at the world every image is watermarked with proof of this one, small, perfect life. 260719 what's it to you? who go blather from