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Planted in our front yard is a tree with hopes to bloom.
Prepared under the afternoon sun by a father desperate to console. 
Inside the house, his children weep while their mother rubs their backs,
reciting as if in prayer, “It’ll all be okay.”

The summer our dog died I was handed her body in a black garbage bag.
Her heaviness surprised me… 
mine did not.

The room had white walls with white cabinets, black chairs, large abstract paintings of animals, and a metal slab that came out of the wall. 
It cut the room in half.
When they took her to put an IV on, a receptionist came in to ask us how we’d like to pay.
We asked for her collar, a print of her paw, and her body in return.

The next time I saw her, she was blooming.

We stared at one another as our skin settled with the smell of the sun;
And as I whispered to her in a way that had only been heard within our home,
we said goodbye.