Page 207 - Dark Matter Women Witnessing

I brace myself before walking in the door: no she is not curled up on the living room rug.

No she won't be there in the hallway when the door opens, doe-eyed fur a little matted

from sleep, she won’t stand expectantly for a moment and then, tail up high, dance her

little twirl. She won't fling herself at the back of the armchair and hang there, body

stretched full length, backpaws touching the floor, eyes turned in my direction.

Sleep undoes all the work of the day before. I lie in bed in the morning waiting, waiting

for you to come in and hop on the bed. The floor creaks overhead, the refrigerator

rattles. You don't appear.

Distraction only makes it worse. Allows it to creep up on me when I'm not ready. Makes

me forget so I have to remember all over again. Last night after the movie which made

me leave you behind such a harsh return— to the is-not-here, the won't-be-here, of you.

I sit at my desk and look out at the park. Our park. You spent more hours sitting in this

chair than I ever did, gazing, dozing, gazing. The trees are maimed from the ice storm,

lopsided, limbs missing, pitiful to look at. What kind of spring will this be, with you gone

and the trees all scrawny?

"Errante," said the slip of paper the woman gave me at the SPCA when I came to pick

you up on that first day of our life together. "Stray" in English, but if the slip had said

"stray" instead of "errante" I wouldn't have seen you, as I did so clearly then, wandering

the ruelles of the neighborhood whose name was written there—Pointe Claire? Point

Charles? it didn’t register, I barely knew the city then. What drove you into the cold

November streets? Did you eat out of trash cans? Find old rags to bury yourself in at

night?

A sign from the first of how it would be between us, till the end of our days together: you

wandering off and never telling. Never making me any wiser about where you'd been.