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Companion Animals
The Way Home
Jessica and I periodically take walks together. Her small dog, Ortiz, sometimes joins us. He spends his days eating shoes, peeing on the carpet, and jumping the backyard fence. But no matter where we go, I notice that he always knows the way home.
July 2019
Walking At Night
Sometimes the horses grazing / in the nearby pastures come to the fence / and we talk. Or I do, and they seem to listen.
February 2019The Wild Dogs Of Hong Kong
I soon found out that the reservoir was where some locals dumped their unwanted dogs. I was there one afternoon with Sofia when a well-dressed woman stepped from a Mercedes and opened the back door.
February 2019
What To Look For In A Horse
Get a horse with a little sass. One who will try / to buck you if she knows you’ve been drinking / too much.
January 2019On Becoming A Cat
Please understand: the external metamorphosis comes only at the very end, after a long, sustained effort. There is a lot of inner work you have to do before then. Also there is luck involved.
December 2018
Survivor
Do I need to go into what turns an eleven-year-old into such a stoic: embarrassed to be sentimental, determined to be detached?
November 2018
Took Us All Like We Was His
Before we was married, we rented a little townhouse in Dallas. My girls was with us. They from my first marriage. Nate come to us when my baby girl was barely a year old. He latched on and took us all like we was his, and I didn’t see all the love in that.
June 2018
The Stray
One winter, years ago, a stray cat lived under my rear deck. He was long and skinny and had a tattered gray coat, a whip tail, a block head, and a set of elephant nuts that hung low off his hind end. He survived by eating scraps of leftover food my mother threw to the birds. The sight of him disgusted me.
February 2018
Eclipse
To distract myself from the fact that my dog is dying, I check the headlines. This is August 2017, so the news is not good, but it keeps my gaze from drifting over to my dog’s curled-up body, trembling on his bed in the corner. In a lot of ways, reading the news is like watching my dog die, just easier to bear.
January 2018
Stop Hitting Yourself
I was twenty-six, working full time at the Bagelry in suburban Chicago, avoiding the future. The future did not seem like anything you could count on. Even in suburban Chicago, where Public Works employees smiled while scraping up roadkill, people were unhappy, desperate to convince themselves of something good. Desperate.
September 2017
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