A Friend Is the Whole Horizon

In the thin light before breakfast, I bury my heart in the soft dust beneath the porch slats, creak, shiver, tail tucked tight.

You think I am chasing a cricket, but I am writing my secrets in shallow paw marks, the only ink I own.

No one reads the story behind my sigh: how the patch of sunlight on the carpet reminds me of my mother and something warm, safe, lost just beyond memory.

I do not howl when you leave, but inside, there’s a hollow place ringing with the echo of your footsteps down the driveway.

At dinner, I stare at my bowl, the kibbles dry and round as stones.

I wish for the taste of your laughter, dropped like chicken scraps, back before the new baby’s soft cries became the music of the evening.

Once, there was a space on the couch just for me, your hand nestled into the hills and valleys of my fur, telling me sometimes a friend is the whole horizon.

Tonight I patrol the silence of the yard, each shadow a memory: the lost tennis ball, the fetch that never quite made it back into your hands.

In my diary, I write with nose and claw: I am still waiting.

I am still yours.

And if you ever remember the way we once ran side by side, I will race to meet you, old scars forgotten, a single bark breaking open the dawn.