Dream

Warm Dust

Warm Dust
In the last room I came across a little cabinet filled to brimming with every sort of dog treat available, all the kinds of treats I used to treat her with. I had tried to keep her interested in living with the endless promise of all those treats. Instead she stopped eating and drinking water, she could hardly walk or stand, she grew shadowy, distant, and more still. She showed one final time a faint interest in peanut butter, and in the treats, but the little plate of both left next to her remained in the end as it was untouched.

On the last day she was vulnerable and quiet and too small in my arms when I carried her, warm dust barely still formed, as fragile as woven paper, already no longer really there. Soon afterward she died, and I was forced to say goodbye. I cried, and kept crying, it’s the first time in a dream I can remember ever crying like that. I cried long and hard and continuously, like it would never end, and I would never stop. It was strange that I didn’t wake up crying. I woke instead with a clear recognition of the heaviness in my heart and a sense of being empty completely. I continued to lie there as the light began to break thinking and remembering and feeling sad.

That sadness has never left.

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