Past and future come and go, but the present is always a stray dog.
It follows me up sun-blown streets with hardly a shadow to its scrawny frame. Its too young to have much of a past, and too old to have any thought of a future.
I think I lose it by moving first this way and then that. But it clings to my scent—the mutual desperation of it.
I lie down to rest after awhile, weary of the pursuit. But the dog does not do the same. It circles my aching body, dreamless in the heat, and marks out the sleepless, pensive air we share.
It waits on my rising, for it can do nothing else, and not so much follows me as supposes that it is I who follow it.
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