I am back in my favourite wingback armchair.  I am waiting to shit.

I have been waiting all morning and now it is almost half-past one in the afternoon.

I have drank water on the hour.

I have taken language lessons.  I have played with myself.   I have played with the dog.  I have taken a shower and shaved.  I have checked on my Amazon order and watched as my wife made kale chips.

I am waiting to shit – every bit of me pays attention to any change in the intestines or twinge from my sphincter.

I drink more water and sign up for an online course that is a survey of Indigenous Canada.

My face is smooth and the sky is blue with the summer.  A few cotton fluffy clouds and a rising wind that whispers with the voice of the Hackmatack trees.

My wife says ‘it will come; as she eats her kale chips.

I watch a documentary on ageing that said nothing about shitting and routine colonoscopies.

Hunger waits at arm’s length, knowing that it will creep closer as this goes on.

The screen door is closed as flies are beginning to come in and the cat drinks water from the dog’s bowl.  In the basement, a dehumidifier burrs away as outside the neighbour calls her dog.

A small frenetic white butterfly goes past quickly.  A slower, larger black one goes the other way.  she is still working on getting the dog to come.     That dog didn’t wait to shit as it ran past my dog and I and proceeded to lift it’s tail and shit with an erection -all in profile like a less- than- symmetrical Ninja throwing star.

I offer Paula some black-eyes peas with bacon – I cannot eat them and it is comforting that she can – but she refuses, content to be with her Kale so crunchy.  The cat meows and moves out of the room.

I watch the basil in the pots and the cherry tomatoes and the bobbing treetops and get stared down by a retuned cat who rubs the chair with his paws that formerly held claws. He goes out the door that I open and close, past my old hiking boots that will soon need laces and over to the basil, to lick his paws in the shade.

I am wondering how to carry this on when the dog (our dog) comes up the steps, sniffs the cat and comes through the door that I open and close, panting away.  He goes and sits in one of his spots, this time near his mother beside her chair.  I can hear him licking and panting.