I · One Road in Texas He was a stray with one floppy ear, dust the color of wild sunflowers clinging to his coat. I lifted him into the cab— already half convinced I was stealing what the universe meant me to keep.
On the rented farm near Bastrop he drafted a personal herd— cattle nudged from porch to watering hole, each lowing body a problem he alone could solve. Those were days of thunderous joy: roadrunners rattling the mesquite, armadillos armoring the dusk, a dog flinging himself at the horizon just to prove it would hold.
II · A Life of Moves Hill‑country house on a rise: deck facing the lake, both of us pausing to translate distance into belonging. Hour‑long walks through the peninsula park, him off‑leash, me learning patience each time he vanished into cedar scrub and returned, panting, certain I’d waited.
City lot, smaller sky. Fence, glucosamine, whisper‑bark after dark. Even then he was flattening himself at my feet— that silent request for a father’s hand to circle the soft underbelly of a world he fought so hard to order.
Was I enough? Did my leash grow too short when the paychecks lengthened? He never said. He only listened— intelligent, willing, near.
III · The Exam Room & After Now the word mass drops like a lost hammer. The vet diagrams maybes on fluorescent paper; my dog just breathes, content to trust the gravity of my palm.
His hind legs hesitate, clock springs unwinding in slow daylight, but come nightfall he drags the street forward because rabbits still need warning and sticks still need their lesson in splinters.
So it goes.
Tonight we’ll circle the subdivision, latched together by nylon and memory. When something moves in the yard he’ll forget every betrayal of meat and bone, become intention again—arrow loosed at darkness.
If he dreams later, I hope it’s the farm: ear flopping, hooves parting before him like water before a prow, my voice somewhere behind— small, wind‑shredded, trying to keep up.
And if I wake, I will count blessings the way he once counted cattle: one good walk, one red ball, one warm head on my knee— still here, still here, for now.