I keep the dying dog entertained because these may be his last days and who would want to waste them sleeping, even if it is 121°F and there’s nothing but steamy concrete and a cracked shitty pool with dried pieces of palm and bougainvillea scorched like fried cicada skins corpses floating on the water? So, I wake him. He’s limp, a droopy, skinny sack of fur like an old lady’s fox stole from a secondhand shop. I know I’m doing him a favor. In his black eyes I see the will to live. Like he remembers. When we gave him a new lease on life, and they sewed his cheek back on after someone found him along the highway in Monterey. He was worse than he is now, looked like a mangy skeleton mutt, with a hairless half-face, so shaking scared he couldn’t muster up a whimper, never mind a bark. 

But he was risen from the dead and I’m no Junior God, but I still I felt good after we took him to Gina to groom. Who’d have known that party-mom who brings a fake chandelier camping every summer and plays beer pong with the teenagers was so proficient a groomer? She weaves around slurpy, boobs hanging out of lowcut shirts at freaking family camp. But she does not have a petty bone in her body. Anyway, we went to her, and that boy was as cowed and terrified as a detention center inmate, or something like what you see in movies. Broken, I’d say. Not an inch of yelp left in him. He let Gina shave and trim and snip and squeeze the glands, and clean around his little doggie dick and balls without twitching. “He must be used to this,” said Gina. “He’s such a good boy.” When she was done, and the reattached face healed and his hair grew a little and he fattened up some and he stopped shaking and could lift his head and look up at us, still looking scared even though it was apparent no one was gonna hit him… Well, it was like the third day of rising again. I do believe there is something to dog spelled backward being God because he was a miracle. 

Even though he is so small and fits into a backpack, he could walk all the way to the canyon and up the hill to the Safeway, past the abandoned apartments and down through the steepest streets back home. He could walk and walk, and every time we were afraid maybe we lost him ‘cuz we weren’t paying attention, we’d call out “Bubbles/Monty/Buddha/Joey” because at every shelter they gave him another stupid name, and we would look down at our feet and surprise! He would be right next to us, I mean RIGHT next to us, closer than a shadow.

But now, he’s acting like he’s too tired to wake up. I keep saying “Come ‘on fella, Come on. Let’s go for a walk”. And even though it’s 103°F, it’s the coolest it’s gonna be all day, so I pack ice-water and an old plastic bowl and turn up the AC in the car and drive us to the park in the middle of the desert that has a pond and lots of trees and we sit in the shade and watch the ducks and turtles. I say “Come ‘on fella, Come ‘on. Come’ on boy. Don’t you want to chase a duck?”  Because no matter how old or crippled or nearly blind or deaf he got, a duck or bird could snap him out of it. For reals, home boy could tap into a reserve of zing and go for it. People sometimes gave me the evil eye for letting him chase ducks, but they didn’t understand. He never caught them. I just wanted to see him try. “Go, boy,” I say. “Go, boy.” But he doesn’t move or sniff, even though ducks are quacking all around us. He just wants to lie down. Like he doesn’t care anymore. So right there in the park, next to the pond, I get down on the grass, in the bird poop and sprinkler mud, and curl up like a fetus and cup him into my belly. I breathe with him, cradle his tucked-in body like a soft fur comma paused against my womb. So that maybe he will remember, and he will dream he is back with his original mother. 

A Cabrera's poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in The New Guard, Brain,Child Magazine, Colere, Acentos Review, The Berkeley Fiction Review, Best Travelers' Tales 2021 Anthology, Mer, Deronda, and other journals. Her short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Award and adapted for stage by the Bay Area Word for Word Theater Company. She writes, teaches, dances and ride bikes in San Francisco, but not always in that order.

A. Cabrera's work has appeared in The New Guard, Anti-Heroin Chic, Acentos Review, Litro Magazine, Best Travelers' Tales 2021 Anthology, and other journals. Their prose has been nominated for a Pushcart and adapted for stage by the Bay Area Word for Word Theater Company. They live in San Francisco, CA.