Yessentuki My dark chocolate,

Kurduvādi It feels like a dog year since last I wrote only you.

The world keeps upending itself. Reality outdoes fiction. And parenting two pups takes its share of a day, particularly when your brother spazzes out like he’s on coffee and crank.

But your birthday deserves a quiet moment. So do you. So do we.

Six years ago, in the middle of a pandemic, a friend and I drove in masks a hundred miles to find you. The world had drawn its curtains. I guess I had too.

Then you arrived. You became an auburn flak jacket against loneliness. A friendly-grizzly bullet against boredom. Sure, you probably made me more of a recluse, sitting here in my home, writing poems to you.

I don’t know. I don’t care. You found me a center in a world of odd geometries.

I want that on the record. I want it noted, what you do, even if your interest in this letter ends with whether it’s edible.

Maybe it’s because dear friends have recently lost pups that carried them through the pandemic and beyond. I think of them often. I think about empty places in beds, unfilled bowls, untethered leashes. How do you weigh the gift of presence? How do you measure the loss of absence?

And I look at you. Quieter now, with gray in your whiskers. You bear witness to the whole of me. Every fault. Every strength. You watch me work myself mad over something on a screen, then remind me of the car keys.

You give us a routine when the world seems plumb out. Every day, the park. So you can run and howl and find your friends. Simply being is purpose enough.

I need the daily meditation as well. Somewhere along the way, you became my chocolate swami, a hairy life coach who accepts cheese as bitcoin.

Some days, I’ll feel the tension gathering in my face. My brow furrows. My jaw tightens. Whatever I’m carrying must anchor the room.

Then I catch you catching me. In the bathroom. Or living room. Or kitchen. Wherever fret or dread dislodges me in time, there you are, gazing like Lisa Simpson at her substitute teacher. And the tension eases like a headache lifting or a cloud passing. I smile. My forehead uncreases. 

And, for that moment, I give you the attention you’ve been giving me all along. And the world still reels. And we do not.

You are six today. Every day is seven for you, and it’s beginning to feel that quick for me too.

So happy birthday, Red.

Let’s have one helluva week.