Crying In Public About a Dog
144 words
I deleted three thousand photographs of my ex-dog off my phone.
Airedales tend to look nearly identical, and one day in the street I met two Airedales and as I stopped to pet them their walker told me that one of them was one year old and the other was seven, the same ages my dog had been when I first met him and the age he was then; his seventh birthday had just passed.
As I walked away I congratulated myself for not freaking entirely out, for not sitting on the sidewalk like a tired dog, refusing to continue walking anywhere.
I must be getting used to it, I thought, but a month later a graying Quebecois asked if I had a dog and I said, Not anymore, then sobbed quite suddenly.
He leaned away, as if whatever was happening might be contagious.