At night I mold myself around the sleeping forms of cats, Liam at my feet, Pippin at my knees. I wake to the howls of Asher, our third, half-deaf feline, hear the panicked barks from the galgo downstairs when our CSA box arrives post-9 p.m.. Too early some mornings, I pull myself out of bed. I make the oats. I put away the dishes. Hugo, greyzoi, all legs and snout, curls next to me on the coach and offers his soft, bony chest.
The animals and I bide our time in the dark. This is a year of in-betweens, a boy finishing up childhood, a brother-in-law closing out a life. Twelve months from now, nine months from now, six months from now we will be transformed. You can’t live as if every moment is temporary, but I feel it so keenly. This, too, shall pass. Nothing will ever be the same. I am not the same as I once was, the bottles of IPA, the long dinners out, the feeling like the future was unknown and exciting.
Who was I? Who am I? Who knows. Reinvention, rediscovery, reification, the necessary illusion of solidity, of a self that persists—I miss that fantastical, emotional, me, loose, sometimes chaotic, connected inside and out.
I hope I find her.