I apologize for finding this dog to shadow you even as you pace the attic from desk to window, you and he, a pair now, contemplating those tough computer programming issues at which dogs notoriously shine.

Push number four because the stairs are murder: a crooked rattle- snake spine, windows painted shut, walls twice papered over, built into catacombs you’re sure they know by heart: busted hall lights & pitch dark landings, cul-de-sacs colored a murderous blood-red.

Assuage their vanity with tools of rhetoric and anything they pay to hear; sacrifice the flesh as a halal butcher hangs carcasses to a commercial god.

My love for you continues to this day. With our photographs and history I stay. Writing stories of our life together keeps me brave: Alive, and feeling better.

On evenings filled with rain the elephants believe my open door leads to a green stretch of forest and trundle through. Each concocts a song or howl of her own— a moan of bassoon, a pitch of piccolos and even agonies of strings to tell…

Choose life until your last breath. Choose life until you hear the Other calling. Choose life while the lights are on and your eyes still focus. Choose life while your heart beats out your days. Choose life while your mind still has questions. Choose life…

Blacken trod the rain splashed souls, Amber throbs the heart within. Modernistic troubadour, Opener of darkened doors.

Spine of a dog curves away from me and against, as heat of a tired dog warms my skin through my sweater, through his fur. He lies, front paws matched, chin tucked alongside them, neat. One still beast; one, antsy with pen at arm’s end,…