You understand. You must.

I don't know, sometimes. All the time. I wish I never came back home sometimes, it hurts because there are disappointments, everywhere, all the time where I did not expect them. The kitchen counters are not as tall as I remembered, the living room is not as bright as it was in my youth. There is a smell that I cannot place--it is neither good or bad, it is not even in between sometimes, never. All the times I thought I could not remain for too long, I did not know that too long was not too long but was still long enough. I invite the dogs into my house one day and tell them to leave and it hurts because there are disappointments, everywhere, all the time where I did not expect them. Leave, I say, you understand. I'm sure because sometimes, all the time, everywhere, one cannot remain too long. I laugh at hurt faces, even if they are the faces of dogs. Too long is still long enough, I say. You understand. You must because you have things to do like stare at walls in silence, at reflections, and pace. I do not enjoy your company, it seems, as much as I had thought. How could it be otherwise?

Why would the dogs want to come back home? Over and over again, they are hurt sometimes, disappointed, everywhere, all the time they do not expect it.

Progress

There is a hard Swedish cookie, or cracker, Dad brought home from a Swedish store that sells Swedish furniture and pillows made from highly flammable synthetic fibers synthesized in Sweden. It is round, with a hole in the center and reminds me of something you'd toss to someone in distress, probably in a pool, or like, an ocean, except it is very flat and brittle and would do no good except soak up a minuscule amount of water, which is pointless in the grand scheme of things. That is part of the reason why it is deceptive.

Perhaps, I thought this morning at the table, the first thing I should do is call the kennels to find out about Regrette and Warden. I started making a list of questions that would be appropriate to ask over the phone. Questions that were short, without double meaning, and ones I could enunciate, if I was asked to repeat them. Questions like: How are you? Then: How can I find out about the dogs I did not want?

But I was hungry because I started writing this list before I had had anything to eat. Then I saw the cookie, or cracker. I wonder if in Sweden, a cookie is something that is not so sweet. Because, the cookie or cracker I had was not sweet, but it wasn't salty either. I wonder too, if in Sweden, a cracker is not so salty. I felt like a cow, because cows eat grass, which I imagine tastes much like this Swedish thing and now I understood why Dad never ate much of it after he had brought it home, along with a bookshelf that was a giant square divided into many smaller squares, like a graph.

What did I find in the fridge? Cream cheese.

I broke off a piece of the Swedish cracker, or cookie, and skimmed it along the cream cheese and what I ate was much better than how it had been, and I felt like a person again, and not a cow. And I found I could continue with my quest in reattaining my dogs, thinking of these questions.

Everyone has his or her pet peeves. My father's, I remembered just then, was that he hated when there were crumbs in his cream cheese. And there were a ton of crumbs from the cookie, or cracker, that I had stupidly dunked into his cream cheese. This made me upset. I broke off another piece of the Swedish cookiecracker and tried to fish out the crumbs, but things only got worse.

In short, I finished the cream cheese. I ate the entirety of the Swedish cookie, or cracker, and felt like a cow again. These things happen, I guess. Progress is slower than one often thinks. Look, over there, although you cannot see it, the bookshelf is nearly empty.

Regrettes, I've had my Share

If you are anything like me, you spend way to much time asking "why".

Sometimes, not often enough, I can get going without getting too hung up on the question. For a while, I was able to just get things done.

When I was on my own, with my dogs, a lot of stuff made sense. Or it seemed to make sense, or I was able to ignore that things didn't make sense just because if I didn't get out of bed everybody would starve. And dogs can't wish their movements away.

"Why?" Then, it was for me. For Stella. For Warden, and Regrette. For Us. For Tony's memory. For ex-cons everywhere who were trying to make it on the outside.

In prison, I could get by just dreaming of being on the outside. But on the outside, what am I living for, when the soothing dog rhythms are gone and the only thing left is a middle aged man who can't get out of bed?

I remember, a couple years before I fired the shot, Tony and I were biking to a party when my chain slipped off. I didn't know how to fix it, but Tony was gone. It was dark, and I was all alone. Miles from home, and miles from where I was going. I wasn't upset at Tony--he had an urgency to the way he operated that kept him from ever slowing down--but when your best friend can let you down like that, the world feels like a much darker place.

I go to the diner with my dad sometimes in the morning. The old retirees meet there and they talk about baseball, and houses, and stuff like that. They get excited, and they talk about whose kids are are on drugs and the ones that got arrested and then they remember that I'm there and they twiddle their thumbs and they look at the ground and they wish I wasn't there, and my dad wishes I wasn't there, and I wish that I wasn't there. But where else can I be?

I am not going to ask "why" anymore. I am going to get on my feet, and I am going to get my dogs back.

A Poem I Found Crumpled Up in My Father's Coat Pocket

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