From Touch Earth, published by Guernica in 2006. M. Travis Lane is an award-winning writer who lives in Fredericton.
No one explains things to dogs. The voice that’s missing has left its aroma everywhere, along with the faint stale smells of those who used to be here: the cat who owned that chair, but never comes coiling out from under the couch the way the present cat still does, those other dogs who rubbed the couch wool shiny with their dreams, but never sit up night to speak at a stranger’s step— But mightn’t they come? There’s no asking the cat. He sits stolid along the window sill watching time drip down the pane. Three yards away a terrier shrieks at the Coming Home of One who comes each day about this time. But the cars that pass are never ours, and the smells grow grainy, cold.
