a moment in the day: one

Quiet, I bend down and lift Nicholas out of his self-heating doggy bed and carry him through the dark morning house. Past the Christmas tree whose lights, with their automatic shut-off, turned themselves off somewhere in the night. The whirr up from the heating vent. Through the kitchen to take him out for a first pee.

As I go to step down the back stairs I remind myself that my Christmas doggy socks with Nicholas' face all over them are a little slick on the bottom. I remind myself it's still 2020. 

Be extra careful. You can make it one more day.

Silly to lay so much significance on a number, to pretend a curse can be contained inside a year.

Still, my brain has always been fond of games and if I'm to play a game on this last morning of double twos and double zeroes, let that game be that what's to come, when that last zero turns to a one, will be better.

I step slowly down, push open the back door. Coming in with the cold is the keening rise and fall of an emergency truck siren.