Everything smells like dog shit. I am sitting and reading my book and as I switch one foot for the other on the stool in front of me I smell the faint, pungent yuck. Shit on my shoe my boot the backyard the floor the towel I used to chase one of Lily's messes. It will all fade, but here it is for now.

I listen to Lily breath as she lays across her pillow. For the first time she is not curled in a ball, maybe her body's way of wrapping around itself in some protective fold. Don't we all begin and end in some fetal pose? Tonight her breathing is the rhythmic beat of a girl who ran in the woods over rough ground streams rocks fallen trees rises dips valleys and paths from who knows when and now she rests. Her body has been warmer lately under my fingers and where I place my palm on her belly. She is stretched across her doggy cushion like someone took a wet towel and tossed it over a railing in the sun.

One in the morning now, and I get these words out. Lily brought out the diary that apparently was sitting inside me taking a bath, having a snack and then napping. Now it is running away with my thoughts and dragging more and more of them from me like a greedy vacuum cleaner.