The dog walked with a limp. He had no name, of that I was sure, names only belong to those who belong. It was clear that life had taken a small taste of him and spit him out like something that wasn’t worth chewing. So he was subjected to the harsh and unfailingly cruel world of abandonment, a world that beat him and broke him. That’s why, I figured, he walked with a limp.

I don’t know why the image of that dog had popped into my head as I sat in my room with an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach, and my dark lonely eyes staring at the bare wall in front of me. I could still see his curly white fur caked with dirt and dust. I saw the street, cold and cruel, the streetlights flickering on and off. There was a desperation in his eyes as he followed us from a distance. He walked in the center of the dark street, the only movement in a solid picture.

It disturbed me; the way he followed us whimpering, crying like he loved us all his life. It was why my sister who had found him on the side of the road, in the shadows where nobody could see. She stroked the fur around his neck when my mom wasn’t looking, a swift but gentle caress before she was dragged away.

I rememer his small face shifting in an and out of the crowd, his eyes fixed on her face, afraid to break sight of her, afraid that he would never feel that love again and the world would swallow him alive.

As I sat in my room all alone, wondering how everything could go so wrong, I realized I was crying. Before long, I was sobbing into my pillow wondering why life squeezed the innocence out of people, like a snake choking it’s pray. I felt it’s grip around my neck, stong and thick, like a noose made of iron. I knew that once that rope was tightened enough, I would lost sight of the kindness of this world, and I was terrified.
I limped to the washroom with desperation in my eyes and looked at myself in the mirror with quivering lips. I didn’t see myself but the dog in the mirror, his eyes round and large, a thick rope around his neck. Then I felt my heart stop as I saw a hand, small and childish, she hesitated then touched his white fur. Every scream was silenced in my mind as I watched her reach out, the dogs eyes lifting up to her face with all the dispair he had seen and instead of carresing his neck, she loosend the noose.