Memories of Cinnabar

Memories of Cinnabar

I saw you today, floating, singing, gliding on the breeze by the window.

They found me and put me in a jail with concrete floors and the smell of bleach in the air. They took away my name and gave me a number. My voice became a dry rasp, like the brittle scrape of a dead branch.

Boots and jangling keys would always come down the corridor. Maybe they would bring with them news of a warm bed. But the boots always passed.

Then you came.

You didn’t walk like the others. To me, you didn’t belong in that place where the air smelled like fear. When the door groaned open, you didn’t look at the scar on my cheek, or the scabs around my ears. You looked at me. You held me, and I remember your tears rolling down my neck like hot shards of glass. They were the first warm things I’d felt in forever. That’s when my world broke open. I wasn’t a number. I was yours. I didn’t choose you. We chose each other.

When we walked in the park, my body was still wounded from the square sides of a cell and a hard, cold floor. My body shook. It was hard for me to keep up, but you were patient. I remember other four-legged shadows trotting by. Some were small whirlwinds of energy, tails wagging, sniffing everything. Others came up to me wanting to be freinds, but the weight of broken promises must have shown in my face, making them retreat back to thier partners. My hackles rose when I locked eyes with a large, German shepherd. He looked at me with hardened, angry eyes. I knew what he was thinking.

You don't belong.

You knew. You always knew. You placed a guiding hand on my back and eventually we walked together like partners. Walking beside you felt like a dream. I felt the residue of my past slowly disolve into air thick with the scent of honeysuckle and the sounds of playing children. When I saw my own paw prints for the first time in the soft dirt, they seemed like small monuments reminding me that I mattered, that I was no longer defined by the rows of vertical steel that had kept me a prisoner. I felt the nip of strained muscles from playing chase with you. I was overwhlemed buy it all. I kept looking up, making sure you hadn’t evaporated back up into the breeze.

You called it Cinnabar. Our home, you said, named for the street. It sounded like a small country by the sea, I always thought. So, I made our house into a country. My country. A place for daydreams. A place with no memory. Each time we walked through the front door, we were squashing on the spongy, moss-covered shores of Cinnabar. When it was cold, you would build a fire, and I’d lay my muzzle in your lap. I shared your heartbeat. I didn't feel the constant sting of self-consciousness. There was only acceptance and unconditional love magnified a million times. I would fall asleep right there. Sometimes, I would wake up to you laughing. You said I was running in my sleeep, yelping. I was in Cinnabar herding sheep, chasing crabs in the surf. I'm the breed that always needs a job.

The mutiny of cells inside your body was a war we both fought. It was hard for me to watch you go through that. You started to wither. The invader inside your body wrapped itself around your organs like a vise. When you could fight no more, your feelings came in swarms. The end, you said, would be a relief. I felt your pain because I was thinking in tears. Your tears.

In the half light of our bedroom, with all those things sticking in your arms like poison tinacles, I saw the soft edges of your silhouette start to glow. You pulled me close, so close that your breath was fiery hot. Your voice was only a trickle of sound.

Will you run to me?

They said that the final farewell they were giving you was no place for me. Funerals are for humans, so they left me here. That was three days ago. No one has come through the door. Where your reflection used to be, I only see the gray hair around my ears and nose. My eyes are dull and muted. They are unseeing, but when I close them, I see you. I know you haven't forgotten about me.

That familiar scent is back. The smell of the sweat in your palms when you held me in the raging thunderstorms. I can feel the salt air of Cinnabar where I played with my cousins chasing sea birds and looking out over the water. But still, there is a heavy silence in the house, punctured only by the hum of the refrigerator. Here, where I always knew the deepest hungers of your heart, the colonization of sorrow gnaws at me.

I can hear the keys. Not the old keys, but yours, as they clank against the ceramic of my food bowl. I don’t have to wait until the sun moves across the floor to hear your laugh. I can feel you. You’re not gone, you’re just ahead of me…just down the trail.

The scent is changing. It is the musty smell of dust and floor wax. The velvety shores of Cinnabar are fading, then coming in and out of focus. I feel the cold air of the floor vent. My head is heavy. So heavy. I want to get up but your voice calls.

No. Stay.

You’re smiling, but you’re getting smaller. I hear my name, but it’s a whisper. I’m running. Just one more throw? One more throw? I hear your boots. I’ll wake up soon and find a piece of you left behind.

For now, I’m running. The salt spray floods my snout. Just one more second…I’m running…still running.

And there you are.