Dole Day Blues

The Collar on the Hook (after A.M. Donaghey) ############################## The bowl is dry. No need to fill it now. Your name still echoes in the hallway when no one speaks. ################################### Rain fingers the sill like you once did — nose pressed, watching for my return as if I was all that mattered. I wasn't. But you let me believe I was. ################################# I keep the collar, clay red with a brass tag, hung on the hook beside the door. It doesn't jingle anymore. But sometimes, in the hush between things, I think I hear it — and I look up. ################################### The garden still grows. Daisies where you used to lie, ears twitching in sleep, the sun turning your fur to flame. Now only petals shift when the wind remembers. ################################### You went the way of breath, quiet and invisible. But the shape you left in this house refuses to go.