In dreams I write a book and declare it my child. In dreams I move back to the suburbs to work in the puzzle factory. I wear aprons over dresses and spare puzzle pieces fall into the pockets like little blue fragments of sky.
A pack of dogs greets me at the door to my house and not a single one of them is Jackie. Not a single one is Jackie but I search their faces anyway. For a glimmer of her. For anything. Sometimes these dogs will do things that remind me of her, and the memory is like a soft indent in my skin.
I'm rotten fruit. I'm bruised down to my marrow. But I'm convinced, still, that love is worth it. I fill the metal water bowls. I scoop the food. I watch, fond and sad, when the dogs circle the house with excitement, their bodies a blur in the tall grass. (I never believed in proper lawns. Especially not in dreams).
When will she come back to me? When will my grief become the leash it's supposed to be with her white, furry neck at its end?
I don't have answers so here, in a dream, I am sitting on the front steps with my chin in my hands, watching the shadows of the dogs stretch and grow. I am filled with the feeling of a distant autumn. I say your name and you are right there behind my eyelids, Jackie, sharp as anything I've ever cut myself on, and it's impossible to be anywhere but right beside you. You are running and I can finally keep up. We are a blur of white canine light, together, escaping into the grass.
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