The kitchen was old and decrepit.  The one lightbulb casts a yellow pall on old chairs from a long torn-down hotel. These in turn cast deeper shadows on a chipped table upon which sat some unused medical devices partially covered by plastic grocery bags and old banana peels.

He sat in his favourite chair near the door.  A warm breeze gusted through the open crack.  At his feet lay his trusty dog, Finn.   The dog had looked out the door and the old man, thinking quickly, reached for his quilted jacket and spread it at  his feet

“Bed” he said.

The dog stepped on the jacket and turned in a circle before settling.  The old man believed, as he sat here listening to the radio (which always seems to ebing playing something sentimental lately) feeling the dog’s body pressed against his shin, that there was nowhere else on this earth, in this life that he would rather be.  He believed that the dog felt this way about him too.  More than belief, he knew it in his soul.  It was a truth he understood better than his own name. Dog and man.  Together.   one and the same.

He recalled seeing the dog as puppy, near the same window, in the sunlight, asleep on his dog bed.  the small awkward canine body sleeping in the sun.  Innocent and gentle. Sweetly asleep, yet so crazily alive when awake.

The old man remembers dreaming about sperm energetically and that the dream was somehow connected to the dog. The dream in and of itself was not arousing,  not sexual -but rather, it was about the sheer vitality of the puppy.

I will be with you and watch the rain pelt the window in the dark.

We will be together and  listen to songs sad and not.

We will feel the breeze in the night.

Both of us looking to the morning light

I will chase you round round the tree

I cannot catch you

But will if  you let me

You do

I will hold your paw in the dark

And when you bark

So will  I.

My sweet puppy.

I love you.