My city has a graveyard for dogs. Not only for dogs, but for any pet you owned or will ever own. Unlike the pet graveyards of the other cities, this one is inside the Zoo, so you have to pay whenever you want to visit your pet’s grave. You have to walk through the whole zoo and see all the animals till you get to it. It is right next to the bears, sadly enclosed in concrete cages, separated from us by an enormous pit. But the bears don’t seem too sad; they just sit placidly looking at the buildings that cover the horizon on that direction.  That part of the zoo is half abandoned, riddled with monstrous cages that, back in the 20s when it was build, were probably inhabited by the most beautiful African birds. Then you get to the graveyard. A garden on a hill surrounded by a green metallic fence that has a little door. Only two people in the zoo hold the key for that door, the gate to the garden, so people usually just leave the flowers next to it. Sometimes there are tourists taking pictures and finding it all beautiful. Most of the times, I am alone here. Because I come here every time a pet dies on my hands. It does not even matter if the pet will be buried here or not. Most times they are just left at my clinic to be incinerated, it’s easier for everyone and the pet does not have the condition to bother about it anymore. Even if they bothered, pets usually don’t doubt the decisions of their owners. I just come here. I don’t know why anymore. Maybe as a way to redeem myself from my failure, maybe to show the little soul, wherever it is, that I remember it and that I regret that it had to leave.

This graveyard makes me feel somewhat calm. It is beautiful. The owners still treat it and sometimes I can walk on it. When they come and let me enter, looked upon by one of the two men that hold the keys to the gate. True mausoleums, covered with fresh flowers. The oldest I’ve ever found is to a “Piloto”, dated from 1927. “I’m sorry for what we have done”. “Thank you for the years you spent with us”. “Our house will never forget your presence”.  And a simply “From the owner that loves you”. I like to come here. It gives me hope that people still love their pets. A lot. And so I can take on the next day with joy and save lives. They may not be as long as ours, much less as complicated as ours, but they are as important as ours, if not bigger and fuller. I always went to the zoo and came back by myself, thinking to myself, and nothing special ever happened. I usually smoke a cigarette while looking at the graves and then leave. But that day, it was different.

It had just happened just like any other day. I don’t remember anymore, with the years we tend to forget the names of our patients even though we don’t want to, I either had to kill a pet at owner’s request or it died on its own on a surgery or accident. I don’t know anymore. What I know is that I was going to smoke my thoughts at the graveyard when I saw her for the first time. I had never seen her during all the years, since college, that I visited that place for grieving. But it seemed like she had always been there, always belonged there.  She walked to my side, like I wasn’t there, and kneeled to the graves. She was depositing flowers to them, a pure offering that I had never witnessed before.  As she did it, I felt the air around her. I could smell some sweet aura meaning from her dark hair. She just left the flowers and went back, like the apparition of a fairy that I, a mere human, was never supposed to see. But when she raised her delicate hand to her hair, to defend it from a blow of wind, it seemed that she smiled at me.

When I arrived home that day, I felt lonelier than ever. The house was clean, as always, but it seemed so big. Too big for a lonely man like me. He had left yesterday night, but with the energy of the moment I still hadn’t realize the full situation. It happened like this that other time as well… And, just like then, the feeling of emptiness only came later. Just like when pets died in my hands, the true emptiness only appeared at the graveyard. Only then I would think through it and eliminate any trait of its existence. But this was not any life leaving me behind. This was a person I loved. Just like then. Maybe I just don’t know how to love. I never had many permanent experiences. In fact, I may even say that I never had a permanent experience, because they both ended, sooner or later, in a way or another. I used to be married. My wife was a lovely person, she still is I suppose, like a flower just about to bloom. We have a daughter, which is even more charming. I haven’t seen her for a couple of years now. Sometimes I wonder if she hates me. Sometimes I wonder if she just forgot me. I feel hurt with her absence because there is no other job for a parent than to love their children. But it was all over, she was taken away before she was old enough to understand that good-bye is forever. My wife, even though adorable, had a very possessive personality. As I spent more and more time dedicated to the clinic and trying to make it prosper, she invented that I had a lover, two lovers, three lovers, as many lovers as the days of the week. And as she invented it and complained, I started to turn it into a reality. It was over soon but it was only later that I started to feel empty and lonely.  I remember it clearly. A couple of weeks later, I had to put down a wonderful animal, an enormous golden Great Dane, mother of generations of champions and a kind creature above all. She entered as urgency, but we couldn’t do anything to put her stomach back in place. So her owners said “goodbye Kiara” and, in just a moment, I pointed her the way out. Then, when I left my service, I went to the dog graveyard and cried. For no apparent reason, I was crying, crying like a child, possessed by the coldest demon of nothingness. When I arrived home that night, I felt like I should die as well. I called my wife: I needed to listen to my daughter. She was sleeping already. Since then, even though I send her presents on every birthday and major holiday, I haven’t seen her smile or listened to her laugh. Slowly, she stopped coming to our weekly meetings and now her life is busy. She is sixteen already and probably has a lot going through her head.

After that, I had quick affairs, here and there, I started to explore myself; I delivered my body to incoherent fantasies. From that, a new person in my life appeared. He was kind to me and always smiled peacefully. He never argued and just accepted things as they went. That’s why he left without any discussion. Yesterday I just arrived and he told me he loved me very much but could not keep living with me anymore. Because I am not able to dedicate myself to a person, I only think about my work, my work absorbs all the emotions I harbor. Then he kissed me on the cheek and left. At first I thought it was nice that it was over. Even though we got along really well and our bed moments were beyond what you can imagine with a woman, what would my daughter think of this? She would think her mother had left me because I was closeted in my homosexuality, and that is not true! It only happened that he was a man and I was one too. I do not make any distinction. As long as the person is agreeable, they can be a man or a woman or eventually something in between. But that moment, all I knew was that I was alone.

I needed to make something out of my life. I need to solve this problem I have, to stop my emotions from being taken by my job. I wished someone was with me to make that night less cold. I don’t know why, but I thought about the graveyard girl smile. It seemed warmer than anything I had seen before.

The next day was sunny but cold. It was Saturday so a lot of unexpected things could happen at the clinic. For veterinary clinics the weekends are always the weirder days. People appear all at once because they suddenly remember they have to vaccinate their puppy. Animals are also more prone to being sick on weekends. They tend to show manifestations of chronicle diseases on weekends as well. But that Saturday held the greatest surprise of them all. When I arrived, she was there. The graveyard girl was there, behind the door, mopping the floor. I just stared at her, brain-dead, while she smiled at me almost asking who I was and what did I want from the clinic if I did not even have a pet. I looked at her inquiring dark eyes and had to run away. Some people say I have a cold personality, but I don’t think it’s true. It’s just that I don’t know how to translate into the right words what I am thinking. So it was not with any ill intention that I asked my colleague “What is that, mopping the damn floor?” But my colleague knows me for some years and she just smiled as usual and answered “Don’t you remember dearie? She’s the girlie we hired as auxiliary since the other missy had to leave to have her baby!” Forgot to mention, my colleague is really sweet and she ends most of her words in “y”, in a diminutive. It sounds really cute when she refers to the “woofies” and the “meowies” and the owners love it but it can be tiring. She is very thin and her eyes are buried in dark pits. It seems that she haven’t slept a single hour since she was born, and she is always extremely active, jumping from one point of the clinic to another without me even realize. It’s the perfect colleague to someone like me. She picks every diagnosis, from the most common to the rarest genetic tendency to an auto-immune disease. I just listen and then pick one. We make a good team.

At that moment I still had not the courage to talk to the girl. She was less mystical than when I saw her at the graveyard but now she was more organic. Real. We were going to open the clinic for the day and I’d not have the opportunity to talk to her much. Still, for my great surprise, she turned at me and smiled. I thought how wonderful it was that a single smile could ease all my doubts and brighten my mood.

As the days passed I felt more wondered with my new auxiliary. She was ready for everything and demonstrated to be competent. Much more than my older auxiliary. She was kind to the patients and their owners and both of them liked her. She knew how to talk with discretion and whenever needed. She was delicate on her speech and actions. I started to go to the clinic earlier and leave later, so I could always see her arriving and leaving. She called me “Doctor” and I called her by her name. I liked the way her name rolled on my tongue and I’d repeat it to myself whenever I found myself alone. I liked the way her name caressed my interior and found myself thinking about it while reading clinical sheets and trying to thread paths to complicated diagnosis. She perfumed the air where she passed by, even though a veterinary clinic is not supposed to have any amusing smell. It smells like wet dog, wet cat, wet person and wet rags all at the same time. But one can only feel that after they get used to the smell of ether. Either way, she just smelled nice. I wished to just get close enough to her to feel her hair, because it seemed so soft and full of fragrance. It was not till we tried a complicated contention technique on bad behaved kitten that I realized I was in love with her.

It had never happened like that before. I never had a love at first sight; I did not even believe it was true. But I loved her when I saw her for the first time, carrying flowers for the dead pets. I probably already loved her even before meeting her. Destiny, maybe? I don’t know. All I know was that, suddenly, I was declaring these facts to her. My colleague was off already, I was just waiting the graveyard girl to leave so I could follow her with my eyes till she crossed the street and disappeared behind a building. But this time my heart did not give the brains any time to think and said it. But instead of looking concerned and surprised, as I immediately imagined as soon as the harm was done, she smiled and said she was glad.

After that afternoon, we started getting together at my house, which was breathing again. As soon as she arrived, it was filled with joy and life. She was reserved and never talked about her life. I did not talk about mine either. We did not talk. I’ve always been silent, that’s why some people think I am cold hearted, but I think it’s awkward to talk on some moments. She did not interrupt my silence with more than laughter: she loved to laugh and to smile. And I loved to make her laugh and smile. More than ever, I was lost in a myriad of feelings. I had done that so many times I can’t remember, but with her everything seemed new, everything made me nervous and lose my confidence. But she would just hold me and kiss me so gently that my fears melted into kindness. At first I was afraid to touch her, afraid that she would break into pieces, but I soon learned how to play on her body, a body shaped like a guitar, a body conceived to be played only by a virtuous and that, for some strange reason, chose me as its master.

At work, we did not talk more than the essential. My sweetie colleague loved to retain her at the surgery room to talk. If I caught her alone, I could not even steal a kiss. She was very reserved. Whenever we were at the same room I’d almost lose focus due to her scent. And whenever we were next to each other, I’d tremble in fear that she would touch me and our secret would be revealed.

But, at the comfort of my bed, not lonely anymore, she would give me more than I ever dared to ask to anyone and I’d be glad that we were still together, even if in secret. My clinic is not big, but it would still be a scandal if the clients knew that the head doctor and the auxiliary were having an affair. Everything seemed perfect. One day, sitting next to me on my bed, her breasts shaped in a perfect Hellenic curve, she told me she had a dog. I did not care about whatever pets she had and just wanted to look at her profile. I like pets, but I don’t like random stories anymore. She continued saying her dog was named Jack and had to be put down even though she tried everything to save him. I did not know why she was talking about that. Then she turned her big dark eyes to me and said “even if your pet is loyal, he will leave you at the last time even if you do everything to save it because you did not care it well while it needed. People are the same as pets, except that they can tell you they need to be cared” I had never been told. Neither my wife or my last lover, they never told me they needed anything. Or maybe I was the one that was not able to understand their words; their feelings were like the feelings of animals: mute and constant.

There was only one time we got to reveal our love in our workplace. My colleague was off already, she had a busy life, and we were just waiting for the hours to pass so we could close doors and go home. She stopped mopping the floor and came to my desk. She kissed me, to my great surprise, and seemed to have tears on her eyes as she smiled. When we got to my house, we did it like always. The adventures were always exciting and new, but I was also glad to have the safety of her warm body against mine, an insurance against all fears.

But, suddenly, just like the other times, she disappeared. The maternity license of my old auxiliary was over and she was back. But where was my dear graveyard girl? Where were her long hair floating above the wind and her silky lips shaped as a smile? Where was her scent, that spread the fragrance of a thousand of fruits on the grey air of that season? Where was her voice, ringing as a canary in freedom? My colleague was not surprised, I think she had always known what was going on, “didn’t you know?”, she said, “the girlie was a veterinary graduate, just like us, at first she rejected the job of auxiliary but then she came. She told me she had met a graveyard man and that she hoped she could find him here.” “So why did she left?”, I asked her, and I felt like I was holding my own heart. “She told me she tried to tell you, dearie, she left to a country overseas to get a post-graduation, I wonder if she forgot…”

So, now, I’m here, at the graveyard. My cigarettes are over, I smoked too many of them, and the gates of the zoo are almost closing. For the first time I decided to buy a Moleskine notebook, like intellectuals have, and a BIC pen, like students have, and write. It seemed to me that the pain would ease if I wrote. It does not ease. It does not stop. I wonder why I couldn’t listen to her, I wonder what she tried to tell me that I missed. I want to run for her, to search for my graveyard girl and bring her back, but I can just stand here, looking at the graves of the pets that just left. They loved their owners, I wonder if she loved me as well. They had to leave because everyone’s time has to come, even when you are only an irrational creature that only knows that love feeds and feels nice. I wish I was irrational. A little but thick rain is starting to fall. I am right in front of a grave, a real mausoleum. I wonder if the mausoleum inside my heart also looks like this. It says:

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Jack, loyal friend,
The house is empty.
From you all that is left
Is missing, night and day.

Every corner of my house
Make me remember you
Jack, my loyal friend
I can’t feel you barking anymore.

I did everything to save you,
But destiny so cruel
Replaced by missing
My loyal Jack

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