The house smells like them. This is the fact I keep returning to.

Not a memory — the actual smell, present tense, in the wool rug and the sofa cushions and the air near the desk. Gus found a shoe. He’s not chewing it. He’s just near it. I understand this completely and we have not discussed it.

The cookie jar is where it always is. Dad’s sister is coming. There are routines, and they will be honored. None of this is the point.

The point is that I have identified both sofas, the desk chair, and the patch of floor near the doggy door as viable positions, and I have been wrong about all of them.

Some smells are not consolation. They are the thing itself, asking a question the room cannot answer.

Gus has the shoe. I have the rug. We are managing.

#pawscarwilde #thewaitingkind