Romulus—
the dog that smelled of sun-baked fur and dirt,
ten years pressed into the seams of his chest.
He carried him through the glass doors,
yelling something half-formed to the receptionist,
“he’s in pain—just…”
and the words dissolved into the silence of strangers
who already knew.
Romulus on the cold stainless table,
eyes too wide, whites swallowing the brown,
staring at him like a child staring at the dark,
asking without asking:
what’s happening? why does it hurt? why does it hurt you?
He knew, the way animals know,
the way dreams sometimes tell you the ending
before the story starts.
He knew it was final.
He knew it was death.
He didn’t cry when his father died.
Not then.
Not when the last breath left in a groan—
a sound that doctors call “agonal,”
as if naming it makes it less monstrous.
He held his mother instead,
her sobs falling into his shirt,
calling her husband’s name over and over,
thirty-five years shattered in a single voice.
He stayed dry-eyed,
because someone had to.
But the sound of her grief
still sneaks back in dreams,
like footsteps in a hallway that has no end.
He cried when she left.
That was different.
That was everything dying at once.
The house, the kitchen light,
the years they’d built,
all collapsing in one quiet motion.
His hair turned white overnight—
not from age but from grief,
like something in him
burned too hot to survive.
After that he forgot how to live.
Tried to borrow pieces of other people’s lives,
tried to patch himself with half-love,
but it never took.
It was always a half-life.
He cried when his children were born.
And thank God for that.
The kind of tears that came clean,
tears that meant:
I belong to you now. I will keep you safe.
I will try, even broken, to be whole for you.
The kind of crying that makes a man
better than he was the day before.
And then—
there was that Sunday night.
No death, no leaving, no new life.
Just silence,
thick as tar,
stretching over him like an old blanket.
He dialed friends.
No answers.
Even God didn’t pick up.
And in that silence
he cried again—
the last time.
Not for the big stuff this time.
But for the smallest thing of all:
being alive,
and utterly,
irredeemably alone.
BB Grey--musings 
Leave a comment