My Best Girl

I had a dream.  Lola was on the bed with me, curled up, asleep.  A light dust of green moss coated her.  It was like if you had left a jacket outside for a few days in the rain.

I woke myself up saying no, no no.  No.  

I wake up on Saturdays and throw up and cry.  Then, I go back to bed.  

I know it is crazy.  I know it is bad.  I am in a heavy depression.  I try my best at work and home but this is awful.  My baby should not have gone this way.  And, it kills me.  Kills us.  

We had our twenty-seventh anniversary recently.  I bought fancy booze,  even though we said "no gifts".  He bought me pretty earrings, even though we said "no gifts".  And then, we just sat there at the kitchen table, going over what we could have done to make Lola not die.  

That's all I have.  I miss my baby.  My big, warm girl.  My hot furnace snuggler.   I still think, over and over, of the time I carried her as a puppy.  I laid under the oak trees in Grant Park and put her on my chest,  She slept, pushing her nose to my neck. 

All I could think was, ten more minutes, please give me ten more, any more, any more minutes.  I could have laid there forever.