Too Soft

Home is at the end of an old road no one goes down anymore, tucked away and sleeping. My mother’s birdhouses hang from the pine trees like corpses. Ye be warned. I trudge down the gravel driveway, the dead pine needles poking at my ankles as the warblers sing overhead. It’s morning and hot already.

The idea to return home came in a dream. I dreamt there were two suns in the sky creeping overhead of my old treehouse. Olive, my old dog, was barking up at the crooked worn house that balanced precariously on the branches. Creeping vines had made their way through the windows, latching on and sucking at its insides before engulfing the house whole. I remember walking forward but was distracted by the suns as they performed death’s dance, edging ever closer to one another. I wanted to get to Olive to calm him, to shield him from the inevitable collision but I couldn’t look away from the sky. The sight burned my retinas, searing twin sun-shaped holes. When I awoke I thought, I should go home.

I don’t know what I expected to find, really. No dancing suns. This world lost to me as all the others. So I am surprised as I walk around back to find Olive rolling in the grass of our yard like an old summer day from my memory. Olive. My mother had stolen him from a party. He was matted and dirty, fighting for food from several other dogs that were bigger than him. She sipped her drink throughout the night, keeping one eye on him before scooping him up on her way out. Our little Olive fell into the folds of our family easily, but it was me he was closest with. He’d push his head against mine and close his eyes. I would have bonded his life to mine if I could, our life forces intertwined.

Now he is playing with me, running away whenever I get too close. I drop my bag in the grass and taunt him back and we chase each other around the yard. I glance back towards the house and see a figure that looks like my mother in the window on the second-story through the glare of the summer sun. Should be her bathroom, if memory serves. It usually does. I’m the only one who remembers anything, who nurtures the soft spot we all possess like an overprotective mother that ends up doing more harm than good. You had good intentions. I pretend I don’t see her in the window and turn back to Olive, who has run through the tree line. I follow behind him, calling his name. I’m not worried. I know he’s going to the pond. I remember the summers of playing fetch there, the smell of cedar water. I remember his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth in happy exhaustion, how he would shake the water out of his fur.

I follow his fluffy tail and white-tipped ears through the dirt and brown pine needles, navigating around the rough tree trunks, old pine cones and rocks just big enough to trip over. My shirt begins to stick to me and I slap away the mosquitos biting at my legs. I can see the treehouse shadowing my peripheral vision. I avoid it like a stranger. There’s nurturing and then there’s poking. It can stay in my dreams.

I call Olive again, and walk faster to catch up. He’s at the pond now, floating over the water. How is he doing that? I walk up to see the pond, its tea-colored water, frozen over. Iron and acid. I tell Olive to get off as the ice cracks slightly underneath him. He ignores me, licking the ice. I put my hand to it, hard and unmovable. "Off, Olive!" I tell him again. My heart quickens as I imagine him falling through. This is wrong, I think. This doesn’t fit. The chill coming off the pond dries the sweat on the back of my neck.

“Olive!” I hear my voice from a distance, calling from behind us. “Olive!” I hear again, but it’s my mother. Or was it still me? But I’m here. We all turn into our parents eventually. Bite your tongue, my mother had said in response. Olive runs to the voice.

We walk back to the yard but my mother is nowhere to be seen. “Mom,” I call, walking up to the house. The back door has a shattered pane. “It’s me,” I call again. “You should really fix this window.” Olive squeezes by me and prances into the house. He rubs his belly on the carpet in the living room, then his face. I sit down with him and rub his head. Was this what he felt like? I can’t remember anymore. He rolls onto his side and puts a paw in the air to rub his belly. All his paws are white, like he’s wearing socks. “I miss you,” I say. I lay next to him, behind him, my arm over him to still give him scratches. My face in his fur. “I miss you all the time.”

I wake up later to frost on the windows, to a wind howling through the chimney. The furniture is gone except for the ratted armchair I fell asleep in, and the carpet. The room is layered in dust and dirt. A few of the windows are broken, their sharp edges letting in the cold. Olive is gone. My mother too; her shape, her voice. My voice now, I guess. I shiver, looking for my bag. It’s out in the grass where I dropped it and I pick it up as I make my way towards the driveway. Behind me, I hear a bark. Don’t worry, I think. I couldn’t forget you if I tried.