oh hilde touches me. she's fifteen. i've seen her change from three. i only go to pick up envelopes, messages and treats from the blue grill, hoping (and kind of apprehensive), i'll see the dogs. it feels good and strange seeing them. i get happy and then i get sad. it's better than not seeing them. hilde really touches me now in our absence. how are we connected now. tenuous it seems, but you have to trust connections. the true ones are unbroken. but maybe they continue in absentia. which is weird—dogs are all about presence, right? is it all in my mind? we none of us know anyway, humans any more than dogs, what the hell is going on. we're just here, in some shifting, heart fluttering, absent-present way. it used to be before the pandemic we did this thing together at the same time every day, they waited and i came—and then one day it ends. everything ends, but what intrigues me and heartens me is how it keeps going differently.