The Rains of Portugal Keegan Gore

Amy sends me postcards but I don’t read them immediately. Each one is carefully set in the bottom drawer of my nightstand. We walk, Sal and I, in the dry winter air. The homes all glow with light but there are no shadows, no signs of life, inside. Sal is Amy’s dog. She asked me to watch him for a few months while she went to visit her grandmother in Europe. Every day, I take him on a different route. We search for signs that the world might be returning. A squirrel. A rabbit. Two children shooting BB guns at the sky. All of this is few and far between, but we treasure it. At home, I kneel beside him. Tell no one, I say. We take this to the grave. During dinner, we sit across from each other. He at one end of the table and I at the other. I don’t believe in feeding animals kibble. This used to be a wolf, you know. One hundred pounds of teeth and flesh. They howled at the moon only because they longed to swallow it. We split a porterhouse. I set the postcards in the center and read them aloud. The storms in Portugal are quite heavy, she writes in her latest. Sometimes I feel like it is raining upward. I ask Sal: what do you suppose that means? In the backyard, the dead branches shutter. I study the way she loops the “G” in Portugal. It is a clean, concise knot, like the shape a figure skater might make. Sal licks his plate. I slide the card so he sees it. The letters. I say. They're beautiful, right? But he can’t say yes. He can’t say anything. He gives me a hard look. The light trembles in his dark brown eyes and he forces me to ask myself: Has her hair grown long? Will she smell different? What if we forget? At night, Sal and I huddle together for warmth. This hulking mass of fur and bone sniffs, snores, and sometimes kicks me. When he whips his head up at the morning's first light, I flop my hand on his snout like it's a snooze button. It's not time. I say. Not yet. I wipe the rheum from his tear ducts and then rub the leather of his ears until his eyes flutter and shut. Sweet dog. When Amy returns I will miss this.