i believe

I believe I’ll never hurt as much as I did the day Mitchell died. You’re my savior. I love you baby.

I had dropped out of college. Film School to be exact. So I had moved back home with the folks.

At some point during my educational hiatus I had gone out of town, most likely to Gainesville to see a show at The Hardback.

After the weekend, I returned home to Sarasota some time in the late evening/early morning. I was fully prepared to silently make my way into my parents’ house, crawl into bed, and sleep off the weekend.

When I walked in the front door, I heard a sound in the distance I had not heard in my parents’ house before. This noise coming from the kitchen stopped me in my tracks.

I know there was no way that my parents got one, yet I distinctly heard the quiet yipe of a puppy.

There was a moment where I questioned whether or not I had wandered into the wrong house. But upon closer investigation I saw all the things that belonged there.

And in the kitchen that hadn’t changed much in years was something new.

A puppy.

I didn’t know where it came from or why it was here but I did know this : “Fuck, I have a dog now.”

It turned out he was Italian.

A gift for a friend of my sister’s from the family she stayed with while over there. A gift she couldn’t keep so he wound up orphaned in my parents’ kitchen.