I read one author who insisted: writers employ techniques like segues metaphors transitions showing not telling or using past versus present blah blah blah. I polish nothing but my thoughts and let the words tumble out like stones rough enough to hurt.

Lily and I stepped into the last day of February where the air smelled like winter ending. The temperatures pull moisture from frozen ground as it lets go of tree roots and a toppled birdbath glued to the yard since December. Snow evaporates into a fog hovering before us and we pass through it. One figure tall with a scarf and Lily who is long and weaving through the mist. We see a man with a mutt colored like a Doberman but shaped like a lab. Another man has his two dogs that are medium and small. Lily likes them all. Good girl.

Lily and I alone again making our tracks through remnants of snow and leaves. Footprints in the mud soon pool with water. Back on the road a girl wearing a billowing skirt over jeans and sneakers sees us and Lily wants to meet her. Lily keeps looking back so I wait for the girl to catch us.

Awwww! Hello buddy, she says. Her hands brush at Lil’s ears. Home again I switch to hiking boots and call Bandit and Hershey. Outside guys! We move through the woods and stomp along a familiar path over stones up hills across clearings around the trees to the edge. Many stony peeks divide the forest as I look from one hilltop across a valley still streaked with unmelted snow to see another rise. Through brambles and snapped and fallen limbs I scramble as brush snags my clothes and shoelaces. Turning toward a dash of sun pushing almost but not quite through the clouds I find the cast iron overturned bathtub stamped 1942. Somewhere someone sunk into warm water as World War II interrupted the world…

I dream of broken glass. It’s on the floor in random patches sparkling and juggling light like a warning: don’t step here don’t step here. The rest of the space around me in the dream is dark but unlike the night. It’s dark like heavy black curtains enclosing me. I feel confused about where I am and what’s outside the curtain. Why am I closed in here anyway let me out.

Home is hard for me. I am a bystander witnessing someone else’s life. I know that since Lily arrived I have not been Ok and I am bothering Jerry who deserves a much happier place to live with his daughter what’s wrong with me?

An old foundation waits for me forgotten in the woods. The last log in the wood-burning stove is long gone and the rafters roof and windows have collapsed. Stacked stones thick with green and silver lichen outline what was once a cabin in the woods. No roads driveway or even a path approach the foundation where it sits atop ledge. In all directions the ground slopes gently downward and away from this little dwelling where one two three people or more must have sat nights with a pipe and whiskey. Maybe it was for women who needed a place quieter than home. Maybe children played house here. Who slept on the old bed frame rusting where hands dropped it on its way past what must have been the front door. Who last poured hot coffee from the little pot where it sits dented in profile on the ground, snow clinging to the spout.

I feel good here and like the boulders and stones leading to the foundation. What people sweat and crushed their knuckles moving stones to the little house in the woods? Lily and Hershey sniff at little pockets in the ground large enough for their snout to rummage and Bandit explores the edges of what may have been a yard. I’ll come back here. A quick hike from my backdoor past a vernal pool now puddled with ice and up a rocky rise until the boxy stacks of stones are in sight.

All the dogs arrive home and drop themselves on the floor except Ozzy the pug who did not want to go with us today. He stood on the patio looking in at the living room through the backdoor until he got his wish.

Sitting here looking at Lily’s heap of bony body parts and happy eyes, I worry about my broken glass dream. Broken glass is everywhere for me in the past few days both real and imaginary. One feeds the other. At the bar I reach for a wine glass, stem up. Turning it over while trying to peer through it’s side to check for lipstick stains I lose my grip. The glass spins and looks beautiful and takes forever to finally crash into the floor. Shards.

Walking down the front steps Jerry stops. Bending down he reaches for broken glass that once held a candle.

I guess it got too cold, he said.

The night before that I had cleaned and swept and mopped and before I dropped the mat back behind the bar I reached to clean a shot glass. Wet, I pull it from the water and drop it on the floor.

I don’t worry about Lily when I am at the bar. Everything rushes to the back of my mind while I deal with immediate things: Bud light, an order of pulled pork, chicken, a 2 ball missing from the pool table no paper in the girls room who took my Grey Goose and soda? God, that table is a MESS.

Lily is still not absorbing her food that comes out in a rush in splotches in the backyard or across the basement floor. She does not seem uncomfortable and I think she knows we are her family now. In the woods she stays close and as we returned home today I caught up with Bandit who sniffed urgently. His hair stood in a ridge along his spine. Uh oh. Then the three dogs took off, one lithe chocolate streak, a bumbling too heavy mutt, and Lily who lopes and seems to bounce with each easy step. They ran through a field that connects me to the neighbor who gave Lily to me. In the field was one of the many little dogs from the home where Lily once lived. A voice calling the dog. Will Lily go with the familiar little burst of fur snout eyes and ears? Will she follow the voice that for at least 18 months filled her environment?

Lily! I call her and she looks back at me, then comes home. Wow. Good girl Lily.