Scant Comfort by Ann Leamon

She seemed a bit better that morning. We kept the appointment anyway, expecting to be sent home with a floppy bag of expensive food and an orange tube of pills. After all,  her check-up last month had been fine.

Instead, they treated her like glass, took X-rays, showed me the clouds over her intestines, sent us through the sheeting rain to the emergency vet on the other side of town.

She pranced up to the door like a contestant in a beauty pageant at an internment camp. 

And now, the house echoes without that silent, stoic presence. Where’s our comfort that she needn’t attempt to wag or shield us from her pain? The dog-sized hole in our hearts rattles with the wind and the rain and the loneliness.  

Artist’s Statement

I write to make sense of the world and my reaction to it. Naming things is a way to categorize them and with categories comes a small amount of control.

Ann Leamon is a former lollipop cook, bike mechanic, and pastry chef who writes poetry, fiction, and financial material on the coast of Maine. She holds an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars and an MA in Economics from University of Montana. Her work has been published in The Lyric, Hole in the Head Review, Live Nudes, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and Harvard Business School Press.