Strays

It was only after waking for the first time in years

beside a stranger, in that gray valley

where morning hasn’t yet taken responsibility,

that I thought I understood at last

why the man from the bar who never spoke

but drank quietly every day at the same seat

for the same hours, and whom I was once

paid to follow home, would sit in his small

living room and call the pound on speakerphone

and ask about a dog that didn’t exist

so that when the receptionist

went walking through the kennels

holding the cordless receiver

looking for the dog-that-wasn’t

you could hear all hell rattling in the cages,

thrashing the chains, could almost sense,

even from where I was standing

outside his window looking through a break

in the curtains, the drool shining on the teeth

bared in the black, dank holes, how

enough abandoned things screaming

could make a sound large enough to find

a rhythm in it, which is to say, something dependable—

I woke next to no one and when she woke

I was no one for a minute, too.

By William Brewer

THE END!