Good Dog

You have never asked me how my day was and yet you are the only one who gets the full report: the bus, the boss, the rain, the particular injustice of the vending machine that took my coin and gave me nothing— you hear all of this with your head on my knee and your eyebrows doing that thing they do— the left one up, the right one concerned— as if you've understood every word and found it deeply troubling. You love me at my worst: unshowered, three a.m., eating cereal over the sink in a shirt I should have retired in 2019. You love me at that moment with the same unbearable enthusiasm as when I have bacon. Slightly less enthusiasm. But close. When I come home you act as if I've returned from war. Every single time. And maybe you're right— maybe the world out there is the difficult thing, and here, where you are waiting with your leash and your hope and your terrible breath, is where the armistice was signed.