I Just Miss My Dog

It's been ten months since Cocoa died, just a few months after his 17th birthday. Some days when I walk into the kitchen (where he primarily stayed during the last year of his life, and where his ashes are guarded by a small sculpture of an angel holding a little brown dog), I just want to pick him up so badly that I can feel his negligible weight in my arms and his tangle of curly hair against my skin.