Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

Patch and Trouble

Patch died last night.
Hit by a car.
When I got the call I ran down
and saw her standing in the grass by the road,
visibly shaken.
Trouble was near her.
They had known each other for over ten years,
run off together
for hours at a time.
Run through mud and leaves and limbs
and hills.
Terrorized squirrels and neighborhood cats
like a couple of Southern teenagers.
Every morning at 5 a.m. he would wake me,
run across the backyard to the house next door,
and stand there barking and crying till they let her out.
Then they would take off together and come home in the evening
by five o’clock.
It was like that for years.
Gone from morning till night,
even later in the summer
when the sun hung around.
All the kids in the neighborhood who saw them
said they were in love,
and that they were married.
In a way,
they were more married that most couples I know.
For Trouble, there was never anyone else
but Patch.
So when Patch died last night at the vets,
I wondered if Trouble knew.
I wondered if somehow when he saw her being picked up
and driven away in the back of the Subaru
he knew it would be the last time
he would ever see her again.