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Relationship of One Half, One, Two
by Austin Okopny

In the spring of my 9th grade year, I killed a dog.
This only matters now because he haunts my thoughts—not like a ghost or anything


like that, but as a memory.
And because it was a sort of rite of passage;
only now do I realize it. This dog wasn’t my own.
Liam lived in our house, but belonged to some renters in the room
 next to mine. One day, I left the gate open.
He wandered off, on to the street. And on the bus home after school,
I get a phone call:
“Liam is dead. Ran over by a car. He got out.”

We are
Dogs to the universe. Ready to be ran over by a car.

God Bless You, Liam. I hope you find it better there.
After that, we went up to the mountain and scattered his ashes in the snow.
Guilt eroded into my head like a river.
And on a walk I pondered dogs’ lives, and what they might live for, if anything.

We are
Just dogs to our Master. Ready to worship Him no matter what he gives us.

This way of life, though, may bring negativity and desolation on the outside,
but on the inside:
happiness. We are jealous of our dogs,
are we not? We work, they play and sleep. We have this responsibility to feed
them, they have none. How beautiful not to worry about the things
God has to worry about. How spectacular it is to be human.

If, of course, God does really exist.
 

 


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