I told Anne that the world I lived in was as wide as the tip of my thumb; larger than some but smaller than most. She scoffed and said most of the worlds she knew lived only in her head, and the veracity lived in the minds of those that truly live in them—or something like that. She zipped her jacket briskly from knee to neck and gripped tight to my wrist, letting the dogs trample out the backdoor before us. Once outside, she effortlessly clasped the leash onto her smallest dog, giggling about some segment she saw in a late night show two nights prior. She said it’s funny how magicians can fool the public by simply mastering the technique of hiding things they don’t want others to see. She claimed it’s the essence of magic within all aspects of life, what is hidden is what makes things wondrous, and why everyone is curious about at least one thing they don’t understand.
Everyday around five o’clock, when the sun was beginning to settle in the west and the temperature dropped another seven degrees, we walked the dogs. She often led with the smallest, and with ease, while I wrapped the leash of the larger one around my wrist at least three times and dragged behind them with much effort to stay upright. Anne wore the same itchy-looking royal blue turtleneck sweater religiously, often scratching at her chest and pulling the seemingly suffocating fabric off her neck for a moment's relief. She told me sadness was a gift, for if we didn’t feel each emotion the good ones wouldn’t be as enticing or stirring, that nothing would give its meaning to everything. She would sit at the edge of my bed and spew her cognitive biases. Sometimes I wondered what everything meant, and other times I sunk my head into the pillow and sobbed. Sometimes I wanted her to just leave, but there she was, typically ever-present, reaching out her hand with her wrist covered in a sea of blue.
I told Anne that we could do it all together, the walks, the talks, the midnight calls, that I always wanted to hear from her and that I knew she was there. On one random day of our routine walk she added a salmon-colored cap fitting snug to her head, and her sweater was hidden by her thick coat. It was more pink I thought and she argued it’s just how I perceived it, to not get hung up, and to enjoy this jovial time, that it might not last long. I cooked pot chicken and dumplings that night, our favorite dish when the weather turned colder, and slid around on our socks in the kitchen, laughing and singing. Her cap hung heavy by the door, and I knew she would be leaving fairly soon, so I stuffed it in my pocket hoping she wouldn’t notice but our worlds are shared and she knew it all. I told her I would try to follow if she didn’t stick around but she grabbed the bundle of salmon from my pocket and fled.
At the end of the week I insisted I couldn’t pull the weight of the larger dog, that it was just too much for me and I was bound to fall. She said to stop complaining and that there is so much love behind this weight that it was hard to understand. I told her some days I felt like her presence was detrimental, that I couldn’t stand to see her in that sweater and I couldn’t bear to see her without her cap. She would laugh a while down the road even when my tears were continuously smacking the laces of my shoes. I told her the grave smelled of verbena and she looked back and smiled.
“That’s how it’s supposed to be”
To the west the sun was making its first attempts to sleep. The sky above still had a hint of blue and deep below were glorious shades of red and pink. Though, what I failed to notice all those walks before was a thin line of purple just brushed in between. The larger dog became lighter for a moment, and soon we were walking parallel to each other. She said it might not last long, I nodded and told her she could stay, and inevitably, I would follow.
Add comment
Comments