Humans.
We’re more like animals than we like to believe.
Feelings we can’t quite explain,
Urges that unsettle our soul.

Thousands of years of separate us from our nomadic ancestors,
And while there have been so many changes,
There have also been so few.

****

Maybe I knew.
Looking back, maybe I did.
She seemed fine.
And yet, maybe not.

She went out and did what she needed to do.
And then she came in
and stood by the door,
just looking out.

A sound just barely perceptible,
It didn’t catch me in the moment.
A sound so natural
That is slipped past me
As so many things do in this whirlwind life of mine.

But I let her out again.
She looked, sniffed, and came back in.

How many times did she do that?
How did I not notice a pattern?
Or am I imagining it all?

****

I took her collar off.
I don’t even remember why.
She always wore her collar.
It bugs me that I can’t remember what made me take it off.
If she still had it on, would we have found her?

****

He’s the one who let her out.
He feels awful about it,
But I know – and he does, too – that it wasn’t his fault.

It could have as easily been me.
Or the children.
And, in all honesty and quite selfishly, I’m glad that it was him.
It would have broken my heart if I’d been the one who let her go without a glance.
And the children (especially one dear child of mine) may well have held that guilt for years to come.

But it’s not his fault.
He turned and she slipped away.
I don’t know that it was planned,
But something within her soul said go,
And she went.

From dust we have come and dust we will return.

Rest well, my Maggie Girl.