by Nell Voss

February and the snow is hard and squeaks when crunched. It’s worse than nails on a chalkboard and it pierces my ears with every step. As it always does, Winter has long overstayed its welcome and now I’ll have to wait until the ground thaws to bury the body. It’s either that or rent some heavy-duty mechanical type thing from Home Depot. 

“Yes,” I picture saying to the uninterested orange apron, “I need something that will allow me to dig a grave for my daughter’s dog.”

She refused to leave the stiff little body to be disposed of neatly by the vet when they determined that the damage caused internally from the tire track on Cooper’s formerly white and still freckled soft underbelly was too great to repair. He still had his eyes open when they gave the injection and that’s what really broke my heart: those eyes so full of love and confusion and the most heartbreaking of questions in their deep, puppy-brown depths, “Why did you run me over with your Mini Cooper? What, other than love you, did I ever do to deserve this?”