Day By Day

Saturday, August 20: She found a quiet space on the forest floor between shadows. Dropping her tennis ball and looking across our trail, Hershey waited on the stony rise. Around her were gnarled Witch hazel trees that bloom in October -- a surprising yellow grove sprinkling the understory. Maybe she will see it this year. With September just days away, she may walk beneath that bright burst amid otherwise falling leaves, but the cancer is moving faster than the seasons.

Sunday, August 21: Hershey in late August is a gift. Splash, and she is happy in the lake again.

Tuesday evening, August 23. She's slow and uncomfortable, but still wagging.

Wednesday, August 24. A cool morning in the forest through speckled sunlight and yellowed leaves, she shuffles. She sits between cedar trees swishing her tail, panting, ears perked. Hershey likes that spot and always stares down the slope. I don't know what she's looking at, but she's been looking there for years. 

One big pain pill this morning to soften the day. Still wagging, but her sides have weeping sores.

She is slowing down step by step and seeks our comfort -- sleeping on the bedroom floor instead of the plush pillow we bought her. So restless in the small, dark hours, Hershey brushes her snout against a hand that I left dangling off the bed. She catches stray moonlight in her eyes and I find her, sparkling. Hi Hershey! 

Hershey

It's a beautiful time to die

rose of Sharon and bishop's lace abloom

trees' silhouettes against a raspberry sunset

and a cancer creeping quickly through her

no more incisions and carving it out

no more Tramadol and rest

playtime

her stitches are out 

waiting on the patio is a green tennis ball 

and a rippling lake warmed by early August's lazy days is a minute's walk away

be happy for the rest of your short forever Hershey and swim and play and wag your tail at everything

we're with you pretty girlie

Wind's yellin at us.
Don't worry, she said. Won't hurt if we don't listen.
Sounds angry, like its claws are hungry?
Can't hurt with our eyes shut; nothins real here, long as you don't stare too long.
Dawn is coming.
Flowers rise.
Moons ebb and fade. Like everything.
Cold wind tore words across cold ground
piling light snow in peaks and hollows
scrawling lyrics in fat snowfall and barren streaks.
Everything, nothing.

Fragments 

A lingering scent of last night’s cigarette smoke in my truck reminds me of you.

In college on a Saturday driving on empty winter streets in a summer tourist town. Smoking and talking, you stuffed another butt into the overflowing ashtray.

Oh, one more will fit, you said.

On another day and on another road I knew you were leaving.

You were talking about a friend of a friend and how she colored her hair.

How she hated her stick legs.

How she didn’t eat for a week, you said, because she was mad at you.

A trail of your cigarette smoke slipped out my bedroom window. A cottage on a dirt road near the water. Waves splashing on a frozen beach in February when you said, Let’s see other people.

Did you like her bottle-dyed hair and her stick legs and her bullshit? Because you traded me for them.

I was the last to leave our little rental. I remember coffee in the kitchen with you — chipped Formica, green curtains, and not enough milk.

I remember running out of heating oil in December and washing your long hair. I warmed water on the stove and carried it upstairs. You were naked in a blue tile bathtub.

You left me for a girl with purple hair.

Of Things That Fade And Remain

She was a dahlia at noon

as red as a love poem

facing the sun

he was a midnight stone 

stuck in silence where her shadow grew

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Dreams are funny things.

Monday: I am at once sunk neck-deep in a rain puddle, driving, unaware of my destination, late for work, and alone in what was once a busy bar, so I walked away. 

About that summer flower and sad rock above, what can I do about those two?

A Monday Night

Laughter in my heart is you
Pain in my laughter is you
Dead in dried leaves chasing the breeze, is you.
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Where one year goes, another comes.
You played music and sang along, folding warm clothes from the dryer.

I hit my head on the shelf and cried, chopping carrots for your soup.

Did You Hear Something?

I dreamt it wasn’t a dream

i shouted your name

but you were dancing

she swung in your arms

her sugar lips glistened

where yours had been

screw you

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Rain, the forest, and random thoughts:

Seasons drift past. Winter was hell, then spring struggled to break it. Daylight lingered. Warmth at last.

I listened last night to early summer’s faint rain and watched the dogs sleep. It’s true, that she swung in your arms once, and I turned around and poured myself a shot, right there on the edge of jumping into a dark hole where I would forget your name.

Wednesday night’s rain tapped away and again I remember waking, wondering what was real. Coral quince blooms and honeysuckle soaking the air — I believe in these ephemeral things. Like vernal pools and I love yous and puddles caught by the sun, they linger and are lost.

From the crooked horizon rose a hawk, solitary and free. That’s the way things should be. Wild things were rearranging themselves after the timid rainfall. Wood frogs bustled beneath damp leaves.

I thought about an old forgotten cottage boarded up on the forest’s fringes, aching for sunlight. It’s coming. Almost. Soon I’ll tear those boards free. And soon I’ll stop being a bare-minimum girl. I'll throw away these overused clothes in which I stew, growing so sick of myself. For a large part of the last decade I’ve sat at night gorging on books and red wine, getting nowhere but hungover. There is so much more than that.