my only sister,
so teddy doesn’t care for fetching anything that’s not in water. i mean, it doesn’t get his fur standing at all. if he catches the ball, sometimes, when esme and i are playing, he’ll trot inside with it. seriously, esme has to go inside and take it like a bottle from a fussy baby.
and if you try to take the ball from ted, he starts away. might run. weird. just wants to chew it.
but lately, he’s been trusting me. bringing it to the edge of the jacuzzi, holding it over my hand.
not to taunt. if i leave my hand still, palm face up, he’ll put the ball there.
won’t completely release, doesn’t fully trust yet that you won’t just throw away the thing we both love so much. why toss that precious, when you know you’re going to miss it and want it and maybe fetching is just an under appreciation of what we have, he says with such earnestness.
holds the ball there, with me, for me, as if it were fucking waterford crystal.
so what he’ll do, he’ll leave it half in my hand, half in his mouth. and sis, we sit there, maybe 3 minutes (that’s long. time it sometime). maybe through a song. but we both hold the ball, and i just put my face in the side of his and just breathe him in. god that sounds so fucked up when i write it, but we do. sometimes i tear up, there in his nape, thinking these different species, who can never speak, can never know what the sky looks like through the others’ eyes. soso heartbreakingly distant.
but there, right then, holding that toy, coddling it like a baby we’re gonna baptize. man, we are on the same page: let’s just sit here and touch. let me put my face in your hands.
i get so taken by the moment, i don’t want the second hand to move, i want to fade to granite there.
and i really will think this, i swear it even if you don’t believe it true.
i will think: my fucking god, what can be truer than this? there’s nothing i could love more than this.
but you.
like, at least six times more than that.
so, whatever six times infinity is, that’s all the candlepower brightness and rubber ball bounciness i send to you, my better heart.
i love you.

xo