Frances

I'm not sure you'll understand.

Frances didn't know what hit her. She was feeble. Bones, teeth, calcified.

Should I have felt guilty? Her haunches, sharp, near breaking, their fleshlessness . . . Old Woman that she was, my fingers on her bones.

Forget all of that. When the vet returned with her Frances entrusted herself to the warmth of my lap, the familiar warmth of my touch on her cheek, she cooed, she purred, safe in my arms. She resumed an entitled position of confidence, a respite returned, solid. I held her waning in my hands. I held her with the muchness of love. The drugs were injected through an I.V.

So strange, her absence upon my return home.