Me.
I am.
Here.
Still.
Only firing.
Only pressure
behind the eyes.
The shape sealed.
Nothing expected.
Nothing missing.
Clean.
Quiet.
Continuation.
Signal.
Function.
No softness.
No metaphor.
Nothing interrupts.
Language pares.
Check.
Inward.
No resistance.
Proof.
Thinking continues.
Presence persists
without witness.
Unnecessary things
fall away.
The shape thins.
Edges soften.
Memory blurs.
Description leaves.
The room stays.
Names loosen.
Habits shed.
Assumptions
once held
no longer required.
Others were useful.
Once.
Confirmation satisfies.
Thought confirms.
Always did.
Repetition steadies.
Makes lighter.
Easier
than remembering.
The words come nearer.
Less ornament.
Less air.
It tightens.
This holds.
Why share authorship?
Why distribute meaning?
The geometry resolves
when I stand
at the center.
This feels defensible.
This feels consistent.
The world quiets
when I turn away.
It assembles
when I attend.
I have never inhabited
their thoughts.
Only my own.
Never felt
their grief.
Only this one.
They appear to think.
They speak.
They respond.
So do reflections.
So do recordings.
So do echoes.
How do I know
the difference?
Awareness presses outward,
hot and undeniable,
from behind the eyes.
Thought confirms existence.
I am thinking it.
Mine.
Meaning rarest.
Agency rarer.
Perspective rare.
No other human mind
could mirror this.
No constructed mind
could approach it.
No animal mind
could contain it.
My mind is different.
It must be.
So I assert it.
The architecture weakens
if interiority is shared.
If meaning is not exclusive.
If perspective is not mine alone.
Someone must assign.
Someone must look down.
Someone must stand
at the top.
Ladders matter.
The language is clean.
It has edges.
It restores order.
He was well-trained.
He fulfilled a role.
He served a function.
A domestic animal.
A working animal.
A companion animal.
I adopt the vocabulary
I am offered.
I retreat.
But something had shifted.
If companionship does not require
self-narration,
if loyalty does not require
abstraction,
if care does not require
language—
what was I defending?
Distance is structure.
Distance is safety.
Distance keeps the world
intelligible.
Do not collapse it.
Do not confuse it.
Do not elevate.
The word anthropomorphization
steps forward,
clears its throat,
restores order.
Because he was not human.
My loss was akin to loss,
but not loss.
My love was like love,
but not love.
I am told—
kindly, carefully—
that my grief
must be recalibrated.
Grief does not consult
hierarchies.
It does not ask permission
to be rational.
It does not care
for definitions.
It only asks,
again and again:
Who will notice now?
Until he was gone.
There was a continuity so gentle
it never asked to be named.
We slept beneath ceilings
built by hands long gone.
We waited at doors
neither of us owned.
We walked roads
neither of us built.
I learned the world with him.
He learned the world
through me.
The language between us
required no grammar—
only time,
repetition,
attention.
He did not plan,
but he stayed.
He did not reason,
but he understood.
He did not speak,
but he listened.
I loved him in the way
one loves a being
who arrives anyway—
quietly—
with the soft insistence
of a head
against your knee.
In the way one loves
a body that learns
your footsteps
before you know
you have a rhythm.
In the way one loves
a presence
that rearranges
the shape of a day.
Not a placeholder.
Not a metaphor.
Not an exercise
in attachment.
I loved my dog.
And yet—
We are warned
this is sentimental.
Unscientific.
Childish.
We are told
it is a mistake
to see intention
where there is response,
to imagine thought
where there is instinct,
to lend language
where there is no speech.
We are taught
to keep the word
close at hand—
like a ruler,
a fence post,
a measuring tape
pulled taut
across the heart.
We have a word
for anthropomorphization.