When the cold begins to seep beneath my clothes, I watch the dogs with wet backs and soft eyes. During the quiet, they gallop and glisten. Their legs lumbering and flying in their awkward way. Not able to keep up with their hearts, streaked with wind, trembling, and beating. As the sun falls lower in the sky, I wonder, at what point exactly is a word a part of the past?
After you say it?
After you think it?
After you feel it?
And, if words are beings, piling up, riddling our pasts, then how lonely is the word alone? I envy the dogs, as they shake their fur, paws heavy on ice, because if there is a now, between the worlds of before and after, the dogs, they live within it.