My legs gave way at the back door, and I slumped onto the steps.  I cradled him in my arms, kissed his cooling black head, his muzzle, pressed the smell of him into me as if trying to capture it.  I whispered my love for him, my anguish into his soft ears.  I wanted him to hear the sound of my heart breaking, to know that he was loved enough to break it.

How long I held him like that I don’t recall, but the cold stickiness of his blood soaking my shirt brought me back.  Moving him, my tight embrace of his broken body had made the bleeding worse, and I wore it on my shirt, my pants, dribbled onto my shoes and socks like an accusation.

Hours later, after he’d been buried by my friend Chris, whom I called that night, I looked at myself in the mirror, saw his dark, dried blood across my cheek, my neck, on my hands and arms.

I looked at myself in the mirror for a long while, knowing I should take a shower before trying to go to bed, as Chris suggested before he left; after he’d buried my dog, my friend, my companion.  But I didn’t want to wash the last of him down my shower drain…didn’t want to lose the little part of him I had left, when the rest of him was already cold, already underground, already being rained on.

In the end, I took the shower, but threw the bloodied clothing into my hamper…and haven’t removed it since.