Everyday there’s a funeral inside my head.

Everyday there’s a funeral inside my head.

Or no. No not a funeral. A funeral is much too alive. A funeral has mourners mouthing I love yous to each other from across pews. A funeral has sobs of anguish from disbelief. A funeral has company hoping to heal. Inside and out. In single file lines. With patience. With willingness. A funeral romanticizes life before death.

Everyday there’s a graveyard inside my head. Yeah, that’s more like it.

A graveyard has more end dates than birthdates. A graveyard has cold headstones etched with knives. Cold. Rainy. Even on sunny days. A graveyard has company when casket drops but no one in sight by the time the grass has grown back. A graveyard is just bodies barely resting in peace. A graveyard remembers death is all that’s left. .

Everyday there’s a graveyard inside my head with the same name on every stone. The name of my greatest gift and greatest friend. The name of my four-legged Saint of a steed my forever loyal angel—Dayo.

Before her life, all the gravestones used to say my name; until Dayo happened to me, revived my life, and replaced each stone with her own.

Everyday I plant forget me nots around each plot. Everyday I tell you I love you. Everyday I pretend your resting really is in peace. Everyday I thank you for my living. Everyday I imagine seeing you in my dying.

Everyday I ask if you’d meet me at the gates. Even just for one day to tell you that I am not afraid of death because seeing you in it is all I really lived for anyway. Even if that is the very last time. Even if that gets me banned from Heaven.

My God, I’ll take anything that you want to give me. My dog, I’ll give anything to take one more moment’s memory with you. My Dayo, I’d still trade my life‘s end for yours to begin again.