Sundial

by Catriona Ward

She doesn’t hear me come into her darkened room. She kneels by the window, humming. She points through the glass at the desert night and whispers to herself. I realize that she is counting the stars, just as any child might.

No one else is moved to speak tonight so we sit for a time in contented silence. The stars wheel overhead and the fire hisses and eats the logs.

He hasn’t been in the world very long so I guess pain is still a surprise to him.

It’s possible to feel the horror of something and to accept it all at the same time. How else could we cope with being alive?

“Don’t pity me,” she says. “Just because you’re the good dog doesn’t mean you’re not a dog all the same.”