to Simba
I still have your old leash somewhere. I don’t think I’ll ever buy another one, but sometimes I catch myself checking the dog park around 4 p.m. on a Sunday, years after we buried you under the old cherry tree. And then I picture you: tail helicoptering, galloping down the hill by the oak trees, ears flapping famously, headed to retrieve a tennis ball someone else threw our way, playing along in a game you’d pretend you half-understand and were half-invited to. It’s messy, the way I imagine you—muddy all the way to your elbows, fur clumped with burrs, that graying snout of yours lifted toward the breeze to smell the salt in the air, tongue out like you are the happiness reincarnated. What a joy it was, to grow up next to you. What a mercy, in the end, that you didn’t linger. The fur that never quite came out of the car seats, the way you’d press your paw against my shin when I stopped petting too soon (RUDE, your eyes said), how I kept catching myself talking to you for weeks after, the silent understanding that you’d known all along that it was almost time, and then that first walk without you, and then the second, then the third, and so on. Mayor of the backyard, captain of the couch, the underdog of my heart, hear this out: so much of what I remember about you feels still like I’ve betrayed you, somehow. I hope there’s someone wherever you are who knows how to scratch your ears the right way. Don’t chase the mail truck. Drink plenty of water. Keep rolling in the clovers. The boy in my dreams still calls for you sometimes, and you—messy, sleepy, gorgeously golden—still come running.