untitled

i am standing in the middle of my block tears running down my face.  i can feel the muscles in my neck straining to help my inflamed lungs breathe.  I can feel my heart pounding in my ears. Minus me the scene is perfect; the light soft and wet, muted fall leaves cover the ground, you can feel the absents of people but the nearness of their long awaited homecomings.  i am frantically looking up and down for my small dog who is missing from the yard, the gate is swinging open to remind me she isn't where she is supposed to be.  In the strangeness of a nightmare there is money scattered across my front yard ones and even a ten mixed with autumn leaves.  i collect it perplexed, whose money is this? i am crying silently but audibly gasping for air.  Unable to trade the literal wind fall of cash in my hands for what i want: my dog home safe.  

i can't call her name i am in the middle of an asthma attack and even if i wasn't the sore throat has left me voiceless.

i can't run around or even walk very far for the same blasted reasons.

i can't even call on the phone for help- I.Cannot.Talk.

i can hardly breathe.

It doesn't matter one bit that i am crying, there is no one to see it.

Helpless, in the true meaning no one could help me and i couldn't help myself.  Yet today i had been later to work than i meant because i stopped to help by giving a lift to a stranded motorist to a gas station.  And after my doctor appointment the one where i was loaded down with RX's for my angry asthmatic lungs i bought a drink for a 3 yr old talked to her mother while she waited for her boyfriend to come get them after their car too broke down.

Thoughts like hot tears: am i really a bad person and that is why i am standing here alone? i can't help but to think of the morning Kilo was killed, please don't hurt my dog....

i am looking around and walking and crying.

walking up and down and my legs shaking and then i hear her coming across the street tail between her legs.  i see the car coming fast between us and i do the only thing i can, i step out into the road the car slamming on its brakes and skidding sideways.  i turn to face the driver just as my little dog passes safely past me heading home.  Why i had done what i did fully registered the driver nods, ashamed to have been apart of this moment when a grown woman would step out in traffic to protect a dog.  Slowly the driver and me each make our paths away from each other and from what might have happened right then.

thank you for not hurting my dog