1 6 T H E T U S C A R O R A R E V I E W 2 0 2 3 technically, breaking and entering required breaking—was entering a crime? My hands reached for him, but his ribs were knives and I had never seen so much negative space where flesh should be. Spots of brindled fur were absent along his ears and back. For the following summer visits, I would spend evenings filling plastic watermelon-printed bowls with dog food and watching from all corners of my eyes for headlights, though I never did see the humans responsible for this dog. Last summer we went to move Grandpa into a nursing home. It had been two years since we last saw the dog and I wasn’t sure if my cousins in Illinois were feeding him. Underneath a bumpygreen-apple-tree, my cousin Sam and I watched our siblings shoot baskets, pieces of the barn flying off in dusty fits of wood chips as the basketball slipped past the backboard. My mom sat down next to us, though my eyebrows raised at the thought of her taking a seat in the filth of these grounds. Solemnly, my mom spoke. The people responsible for this dog had taken up and moved out. I would never see him again. I pictured his tremorous paws, the death I saw in his eyes the day I first saw him. He’d forget what a kind hand felt like. “All you can do is keep him here,” she said, pressing a palm to the left side of her chest. Last night, I spoke with my grandmother on the phone for the first time in too long. She was visiting my grandfather on his side of the nursing home. I imagined her the same way I knew her when I met that dog: nails painted crisp red, legs crossed, curlers freshly taken out, though I fear she also remembers me for who I was then. For Christmas, she sent me a Tinkerbell onesie. Grandma chattered about the hot gossip in the nursing home for several minutes, but I could hear Grandpa muttering something in the background. Something about me. Grandpa wants me to ask you if that dog is doing ok. That dog. Did Grandpa go and see the dog? He must have gone to see him with me once. Barely, in the heat of trying to figure out when or if I took him to see this dog, I catch grandpa’s voice saying my name. My name. Author Information: I am a dancer, yogi, writer, and farmgirl. I live on what used to be a dairy farm with my family, raising goats and horses. I have found purpose in earning my yoga teaching certificate and sharing the practice of holistic healing. Since childhood, writing has been an outlet for me—a place of candid articulation and artfully strung sentences.
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