Fur, Faith & Other F-Words That Followed

I had exactly two minutes before office. No time to mourn. No time to dramatize. I scooped up the remains, put on my shoes, and left the room the way soldiers leave lost battlefields — quickly, silently, hoping nobody asks too many questions.

They say every home tells a story. Mine seems to shout it from the rooftops: YOU ARE NOT IN CONTROL. Still, some evenings, I sit on the new sofa — books now hidden like state secrets, plants a myth I once believed in — and a muddy dog climbs into my lap like he owns the place. And in that moment, surrounded by ruins and fur and one surviving cushion, I feel a strange, stubborn kind of peace.

I think Hobbsie — wherever the hell souls go after they have broken your monitor and your heart — took one look back at this mess, saw me sobbing on the floor, and went: "Okay, you needy woman. Here. I will send you someone." So, he did. He sent Mist.

Not a copy. Not a tribute. But a chaotic, ridiculous, glorious reincarnation. The universe hit ctrl+C on Hobbsie, ran a fuzzy grey filter, and dropped him right back into my life — inside a rice bowl. Yesterday, I buried Hobbsie again. But this time, I buried the idea that he was gone. Because he never really left. He has just been napping — very inconveniently — in my rice cooker.