The End of The Day in April

I'm on my own. The emptiness is all around, breathing in the shadows, I can feel it. Watching. (Waiting?) What am I going to do with my night? My life? What about my life? It is still, quiet. I could do anything. Anything is possible.

I look around and wonder what to do?

The garden is green, outside, through the windows, beyond the walls, as the last of the day light fades. Nothing moves, still, silent. Leaves caught in suspended animation. A moment. The room is frozen, my skin shivers. I feel the walls at my sides, tapping at me, closing in, but they feel like friend not foe. I feel protected. Safe, I feel safe.

No plans. No friends calling. I've been out to lunch, now nothing. Silence... into the night. My skin tingles, a shiver runs through my bones.

Silence. Blink, blink.

I stand and stare. What to do? I don’t know how long I stood there.

I felt a tap on my leg. I look down. My dog is sitting looking up at me.

“What?” I say.

He runs off. He returns with his lead in his mouth.

I laugh. “Yeah, sure, why not,” I say. "We can do anything."

I click his lead onto his collar. He stands up wagging his tail. We head to the door.

The light is lovely outside, the dusk is gorgeous. We step out the gate onto the footpath. Rudi bounces with excitement. We head up the street, Rudi padding along next to me. He looks up at me with his big brown eyes.

The light is diming. I feel safe. We set our own pace. Rudi sniffs everything, of course. That’s what he does. I let him, it’s his time, and mine. The footpath stretches out in front. We walk, the two of us, the night starts to fall all about us. Me and him. We walk it out. Rudi leads the way sometimes, sometimes I tug at his lead when he gets too in his own head. The padding of both our feet. Street. Street. Street. We do the block, we always do the block. It’s a big block. I admit, I like routine. Me and him. We walk for an hour, it gets it out of our skin. 

Sometimes we do the big black. Sometimes we go to the gardens. Sometimes we do the dog park, where Rudi’s off his lead, and he runs about with the other good boys. Then I whistle, and we head home. 

Togetherness, the world’s a mess, as they say, but who gives a crap, with my best friend next to me.

Sometimes, I let him off his lead when we are in our home block and there are no more roads to cross. But, he can put his head down and sniff, sniff, sniff like he is a sniffer dog and those last few metres can take as long as the walk. My next door neighbour says they are just checking emails from other dogs, and the closer to home we get, the more important the emails get.

He’s always at the gate ahead of me though, as if that is his job, getting to the gate first.

That big, pink tongue lolling out of his mouth, slobbery ooze dripping from it. But, that smile, that huge goofy smile is unmistakable. A good job done, we had lots of fun. He slobbers from his water dish inside when we are done. I pour myself a glass of juice. We both get on the couch and watch the TV. He puts his head in my lap, of course, he is too big for that really, but we manage.