So Long Told of the Night So Cold

It is odds and ends that are keeping me warm now: my brother's sweatshirt, a leopard-print blanket, a sunflower barrette my mother threw away. My dog keeps his nose firmly pressed to the dotted line that leads him in beelines. The night is hollowly gothic, dramatically angular, rendered in shades of purple and yellow.

He stops. "This is the place," my dog says, and he definitively shits in a small heap. Wiping his feet briskly, he harmonizes with my blood. The dotted line, weaving between the bricks of the driveway, ends on the doorstep. The front door is unlocked, and everyone who passes through it is going to sleep but me.