a moment in the day: carpet

Ten o'clockish on election night. We've listened to the commentaries and obsessed over the map and eaten a pan of French fries, knowing there probably won't be any miracle in the night to bring us back from this dangerous and ludicrous place our country has gotten to. 

I've done squats and pushups and sit-ups and I should just go to bed, my brain doesn't know what to do with all of this, even though I did kind of figure it would go this way. Instead, I sit down on the floor in my office upstairs, the room where Nicholas spent most of his time at the end of his life. I lean close over the carpet. I look for pieces of fur.

That's my hair, that's my hair, that's my hair, there's one. One single strand of Nicholas's fur. It's so small. Less than an inch long. Every tiny piece of fur, I pluck it up and then twitch my fingers over a ramekin and drop it inside.

I haven't vacuumed up here since we said goodbye to Nicholas. I haven't been ready to suck up all those tiny wisps of him. I'm strange, and this little activity is undoubtedly gross. Maybe I won't tell Stephen.

I get my phone and turn on the little flashlight and direct it across the carpet. The light glints on strands. That's my hair, there's one, that's my hair, there's one. 

There's this book Powell's had on display once a long time ago, called something like Felting with Cat Hair. I don't even know if you could do that with Chihuahua hair. It's so short, could it even stick together? I don't know if I would do that if I could, even if I could procure enough fur, and I already have a little snipping of his fur in a locket, but I still hunt and hunt. I feel weird and obsessed. Maybe I won't tell Stephen.

There are lots of them embedded in the black fabric of the futon. I use the tweezers.

After what feels like a long time of this, I look and I have—almost nothing. A thin spiderweb of fur, nearly invisible against the white bottom of the ramekin.

I keep going. One little fur, one little fur. And here at the end of this important and horrifying election day, this activity feels like it's trying its damnedest to be a metaphor—this interminably slow attempt to get each of these single tiny things to add up to something big—but I'm too sad to dig too deep into what to make it mean.