I Told Lara

I told Lara, told her we would meet again. Her on the metal table, the light bleeding over stainless steel and clinging to arm hair’s, draining color from her matted fur. In her eyes something - not light more what light becomes when soil is shoveled up, a soft luminosity, rain dark. On the way here, she had on the backseat of the car the loss of control, her blindness… for a while she shuffled, put her nose to the side window as if smelling better days, then she whimpered, from the driver’s seat I heard myself say: 'there, there', knowing we were 'there' already. When we arrived she was laid down between the seats, I had to tug her out the back door, she let me, sometimes she liked to play dead when she didn't want to do something - not now. Now I am looking down watching her blind eyes following something, maybe tracking these strange smells, or seeking out shapes only blindness can see. Animals don’t think of their own death, they don’t imagine it, for them it’s just a place where they are. The young woman in the white coat asks me if I wanted to hold her? I could tell my old dog was going, I held my breath, staring at the ceiling trying not to be anywhere. I don’t believe in the past or the future, not in any absolute sense. My guess is that Lara did not either, maybe we are meeting now as I write these words - words not spoken.