There’s an expression saying that writers get to live twice, one on earth, the other on paper. These lives envy each other, though, always living vicariously through the other. Reality will always want to be better than it is, and stories just want to be true.

I get stuck in these stories while the world goes on around me. Memories are hard to hang on to, even harder to validate. The one constant bringing me back to the moment  was a little white and brown dog with eyes that did all the talking. She slept next to me in a line with her cold nose buried in my side. Followed me into every room of the apartment (to my frustration, because I just wanted to her to relax on the couch and kept hearing the click of her nails on the floor coming my way). Every time I ate anything, she watched the entire time. On our walks she would lead the way with radar ears, lashing out with her “smoker’s bark” if there was another dog within a block of us. Her love was so real that I could never find the words to capture it. I never imagined that one day I would only have those memories. Those fucking memories that I love to live in so much. I never thought she would be one of them.

I am alone now, and unmovable. There is no one to lead me. No clicking nails from room to room. No reason to get up early in the morning. Everything is different, and I am curled up holding my knees rocking back and forth in between these two worlds that a writer “gets.” She is in neither of them, and I am all over the place.

Luciana, 30