There is no right time
to tell them so it comes out
after lunch.
My face wobbles and sinks
like fruit that is too ripe.
Pug passed away.
My son guesses it
before I say the words
and then my daughter runs away
into her room
shouting no no no no no
as if the truth is a terrible burglar
who has broken in
and is trying to rob us
which, of course, it is.
I follow her into her bedroom
where we cuddle on the floor
and my son watches us cry.
I am the most sad
he declares, competitively,
and I can see the confusion
in his eyes as he wonders why
his grief is taking so long.
And then my daughter says quietly,
I wish there was a phone number for deadland
and it is this
that finally pulls
the tears down his face,
a reckoning of how irreversibly far
someone can travel away from us
while we blinked.
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