She's gone, and you are on your way.

         You would think true events were an instant inspiration, creepy events like 6 children dying at 6 years old creating great poems meant for the dark on rainy nights. But really you just sit in your pjs adding stains to them with coffee and skip over the headline in the paper. No one really needed the news reporters in Collingwood. News travels so fast by natives they only ordered the Sunday headlines out of courtesy. I had heard about the dead girl's gruesome circumstances from Jeremy when I ordered pizza last night. He heard about it at school from a kid who knew the older brother of the girl, they had all been in the same grade for a year, of course then the brother died. Really I just nodded and shared a shiver with Jeremy, I didn't really care to continue the topic.
         I had been a couple years ahead of Jeremy in school and we had known each other a friend of a friend, but nothing more. At least I wasn't alone with a personal pizza that night or he would have insisted on walking me home after his shift and trying to stay for dinner. But I had a hot date. A mostly bare baby with practically no nose. At least his color had filled in a bit and he was starting to look a little more textured with down. Not nearly as attractive as Jeremy's craggy oily teenage face, but I would have to survive.
         I was nowhere near alone. Someone else ate the toppings I picked off my pizza and cared what time I woke up in the morning. So I set aside the depressing paper and threw another slice of left over pizza toppings to the Rosy nose on the other kitchen seat. It was the first time I had taken the time for breakfast in ages and it was fun. I opened my laptop and drafted.

Speaking comes in little nudges
smiles are less to ask for
so grin and grimace
pinch your cheeks
and your chin
Contort the feeling back into your skin

         No rhyme scheme or meter, and a great pattern to look at. Poems should be for the eyes as well, feeling as even or not as the words themselves. It prohibited some poems, waiting for the right number of letters or words to paint a picture, but really I needed to go back and revise things and compile then. I would buy real dog food, but I can't, not yet anyway.
         With a start the pup jumped straight up managing to tip his entire chair to the ground and still manage to slide to the door yapping all the way. He made a wide birth around my mother's couch and fell silent for a note before getting right back on the chugging to crazy down. He leaped repeatedly up towards the handle yelling as he went. Spent a moment watching before deciding to take a peak. No one would see me through the lens in my door. I slid my feet under me and lifted upright setting the mug on the equally stained table and left it standing praying it wouldn't go cold. Even a cup of instant was better than none. I stepped over the lip between kitchen and living room, but was still caught on one of the boards that peaked up looking for victims. My nail was forcefully pushed back into itself until the point it was left behind when I slid forward on my other foot realizing each of the dog's Rosy mouth madness punctuated a knock on my door.
          So I presented myself, browned jammies, reddened toe, and pink dog, a rainbow to the caller. A woman stood before me, and I realized I had forgotten to look through the peep hole before I opened the door inward, like an invite to the stranger into my home. "You don't look scary" I decided I would have open the door anyway for the average looking. She wasn't memorable until she drew her eyebrows together tensing in preparation and shot herself down the corridor only leaving a trail of water droplets in her wake.
         She mist have swum in from outside and was still toting around the ever present gray behind her. The whole world was slurred with the weather drenching its self in tear from big puffy eyes in the sky. It would be pretty typical for Collingwood dodging around the cold water pellets, but we now swam next to ducks trying to get up the street. Metaphors aside Ducks were running around as crazy as the other inhabitants. I was sure though their strange gathering would ends soon, just as the canary convention and bluebird convention had dissipated before it. Slowly I retreated closing the door and made sure it didn't slam so as not to wakeup my neighbors at the dim hour. Rosy squeaked and barked once at the door. He seemed as speechless about the visitor as I had been but he hand't been a resident long enough to not let it phase him.
         But we weren't alone anymore. In the window above my mother a bright green tinged in curling letters. She's gone, and you are on your way. The letters flashed against the dark and gray water colors tinged by a blurry highlight of glow paint. And I was left against the door with Rosy to stare at my mother wishing the visitor would come back. The author of my windows new decoration was right. I hadn't seen in a long time, and I didn't have the courage to drag my lids up and wipe away the sleepies. Rosy licked me a final time leaving a trail of drool and I followed him into my bedroom.

       
       

Going to the dogs...

Going to the dogs was right, it seemed like the entire contents of Collingwood Heights had turned out with their pets; ballon, ferret, and other wise. No one seemed to have realized it was a dog party and one stringy guy even had an equally stringy rodent sitting in the nest of his hair. It was 100% Collingwood, patches ruins and all. No one seemed to even think about the crime scene right outside of the gates of the Dog Park marking the final resting place of yet another ghost of Collingwood Heights. Life worked like that, and in a place where everyone would rather hear rumors than any story on who was president or which countries had declared war on each other, you were closer to everyone as a person even if what you knew about them was made up. The same babies she had held as their mothers fumbled for their keys ran around toting shiny rubber puppies made by the same guy who had twisted balloons into swords for her not too long ago. Mothers ran after dogs and Volunteers ran after children and all looked a bit too pink in the heat of desperation. Some desperate for a companion, others for shade, but all were there together and that was something to rejoice because no one had died yet. I chose one of the sparsely grassed areas of the lawn and sat down to relish in the smells of less doggy dung than usual. One pup had strayed over to a fence edge cowering into one of the posts, licking and gnawing at the wood grains. Charlotte slipped the complementary treat bag from her pocket and unstuck her sweat glued butt from the dirt. When she finally got with in a couple steps of the dog it froze, teeth still exposed. Charlotte chose a spot a little to the left of the statuesque furball and lowered herself back down with her back on the fence. "There isn't really much worth eating here is there, except these biscuits, and I don't really want them." I slowly moved my head to look at the dog chewing at air trying to shake the splinters from it's pinky gums, "unless you want them?".  I withdrew my hand and pushed my arm to full extension and held the treat within aromal reach of the puppy's perky pink nose. The whole think was pink. The nose and gums and paws and even the skin underneath its scraggly white fur. It reached its long tongue out pulling the tasty treat to the ground before snapping it up and going back to chewing at the air and staring straight ahead. I set another treat on my knee to coax the pup and followed its gaze. A man stood across the way in a pressed purple suit set gazing out at the crowd from under the brim of his hat. His eyes were indistinguishable but he didn't pant from the heat even with the long pants, shirt, coat, and hat. A dog pranced out of the grasp of a child and dodged towards the man and hit him by accident, but he didn't flinch much less look down at the pesky nuisance. The shiny plum shoes pointed like a neon sign toward the empty ballon cart with a dispersing line of disappointed kids slowly walking away empty handed without little bubble dogs waiting to go out with a bang when they were loved a little too hard. I shuddered, jerking my head down to my lap to see a rosy belly turned up in my lap. "Rosy baby, aren't you a sweetheart".  I cradled the curious lump in my arms and rose. Around it's neck it wore a paper band around it's neck marking it as one of the dogs one of the local humane societies was putting up for adoption. "Well you seem unaccounted for, let's get you a collar and make us official". I wouldn't be sleeping alone tonight surviving the flailing sounds from the living room, someone would be keeping my feetsies warm and my dreams my own.