Welcoming Meadow:
Arriving home at 4am with the ghost weight of my dog gone flaccid in my arms after I said Yes to the needle, ending twelve hours of seizure, eleven years of companionship, just as I had said Yes to the nurse who removed the lone breathing tube keeping my mother alive, I drank myself to sleep, dreamed my dog crossed a meadow, smooth grassy stalks swaying lightly, seed heads anointing the ridge line of her back. In the sparkle of dawn, vague gray forms, her pack, rustled the underbrush around her.
