Addison Rizer
The morning I put my dog down, a love letter skitters across the sidewalk. I can tell by the flashes of pink scribbled onto the thick envelope turning end over end as it dances with the wind. On a bench, across the street, I wonder if it’s real. If I am real. I’m half-convinced, too late now, that I should have kept him alive.
Yes, there was the tumor. Yes, there were the seizures, two and then three times a day, but only when he got excited. His tail was wagging and then, all at once, it was stiff and soaked in his urine as he yelped on the floor. Yes, there was the heart murmur that the overweight vet said was a six out of six. Not a murmur—a pause, a giving up.
But he was coherent most of the day. Sleeping underneath the television, walking, skewed sideways by his growth the size of a baseball, then a softball, then even larger upon his ribcage. He followed me to the kitchen when I came home with his favorite tortillas from the Mexican food place down the road. Yes, most times he was himself.
But then for an hour after the seizures, he was walking into walls. He was staring at nothing. He was unaware of his own name.
Though 90 percent of the day he was himself, the other 10 percent he was empty, and the balance was growing ever more to the hollow side. What percentage was I waiting for? I told myself not yet. Not until it felt right to say goodbye. Until it didn’t feel so selfish to say enough was enough, knees aching from cleaning up his pee from the carpet for the third time in a day.
It was convenient to consider putting him down. Horrible to admit to when he still slept curled against my side every night, chasing the neighbor’s cat through his dreams. When he still knew the smell of fresh tortillas. It was selfish of me to want not to worry so much about him. To want him to be his old self. To be easier—my entire shift at the gas station spent counting how many stains I would have to scrub when I got home, carpet marks pressed into my skin permanently, it seemed.
But the seizures got worse. Still, I couldn’t be certain. I couldn’t be sure. Not with a decision like this. I asked the vet what he thought, and he only looked at me with sad eyes. He couldn’t make this decision. In every universe I existed in, this was the one in which I was the loneliest.
I nodded. I nodded. How could I have nodded?
I’m convinced now, as I watch the love letter slide away, that I was wrong to put him down. He could have lived a few more years. He could have walked sideways into the kitchen and bit my fingers as I fed him tiny pieces of tortilla broken from my own quesadilla, warm from the oven. He could have been happy and alive and dreaming, still.
But the seizures. The tumor. The way his heart was giving out.
The love letter slides against the sidewalk, drifting farther from the mailbox glinting sunlight into the eyes of everyone who passes. Farther and farther away from me. The love letter will waste away. It will find a puddle and sink into it. Pick up boot-print and mud-streak and deteriorate beneath the sunlight.
Surely, someone else will pick it up. Surely, a passerby will make sure it reaches its rightful place.
But no one stoops to pick it up off the ground. Eyes glance, mouths frown, but still, no one touches it.
I have to be at work in 20 minutes. I have to dry my eyes. But I take seven steps after the letter even as it takes seven steps more away from me. I lurch for it. It lurches for someone else. I understand that. I wish I could lurch away from myself, too. I killed my friend just hours ago. I held him as he died.
I crash into the shoulder of a man walking in the opposite direction. I don’t even apologize. I notice the throb in my shoulder only after he has already disappeared. I look back and wonder if I collided with a ghost. That doesn’t matter now. The letter needs to find its home. It would be a tragedy to expect a letter on Saturday and find only an empty mailbox. What if it’s the last love letter that person will ever receive? What if it’s the last love letter in the whole universe? I can’t let it stay lost.
I have suspected for a while now that love letters are only ever about one thing: regret. Regretting leaving, regretting staying, saying the wrong things, never saying the right ones. Attempts at righting wrongs, even the simple wrong of the universe’s distance between two people. Who am I to witness the destruction of that? Who am I to enable it by my inaction?
I’ve waited too long. I should have started running when the letter hit the ground. I should have caught it before it fell. Now, it will have wounds it doesn’t deserve, scrapes picked up from the ground.
I run. The letter catches air, envelope shining in the light. The suggestion of rain clouds on the horizon. My shift is starting, and I’m still running. The sun shifts, and I’m still running. I slip on sidewalk cracks and push off passing people and bruises bloom on my biceps. They ache with my reaching.
Still, I reach. I lunge. My lungs burn. My legs go numb. The sun begins to set, and the suggestion of clouds becomes the reality of rain.
I miss the entirety of my shift. I miss dinner with my mother. I miss 10 phone calls from my boyfriend. I miss my dog—my friend—and I picture his face as his eyes went dull. I miss the letter, over and over again, hands always empty.
Still, I inch forward. The letter slows, in my eye line but ever out of reach. Midnight nears. Rain falls. Is it fair to stop running now? Now that I’m soaked and starving and have missed all my plans? Now that the water is ruining the letter, smearing the words?
When the sun comes up, the letter is half-sludge, crawling upon the sidewalk. The name on the envelope has disappeared in the night. Should I keep running, now? When can I say I tried hard enough to be satisfied with failing? With losing?
If I scoop it up in my palm, it can’t be delivered. The mailman won’t try.
What now? A trashcan sits nearby. Should I throw it away? A letter once so full of meaningful regret? A letter that meant something to someone? A tragedy thrown in with orange peels. That feels wrong. It all does.
In a patch of grass, I dig with my hands, nails broken and fingers pruned. I slide the sludge into the hole. I cover it up with damp dirt and mark the spot with an uneven heart and say goodbye aloud. I cry.
I’m not convinced I shouldn’t have put him down. I’m not convinced, sludge stuck to the crevices of my fingers, of the suffering I had spared him. Too early or too late. I tried for so long to catch the letter. Tried until my legs gave out.
It’s impossible to know if, had I tried harder, I could have caught it in time. But I did what I could. I did what I could. I promise, my friend, I did what I could. I hope I can be forgiven for that.
I hope a tree grows from this place. I don’t know; I don’t know. I was only trying my best in this loneliest universe, and more than anything I am grateful for the body that slept beside me, for the fact of the love letter at all.