Limitations of Love

Two nights ago, I was leaving work. I sat in my car, checked the rear and side mirrors and instead of taking the usual route home, went in the opposite direction. Intending to go home, but just not the same way.

I was about to accelerate when a small form crossed the dim yellow pool of street light. I slowed down. My friends think that I was fitted in with some radar that alerts me to the presence of animals, a few hundred yards away. As it turns out, the little form was a puppy. Black with brown markings. He did not seem to belong to anyone and he knew it.

So he tried to belong to whatever seemed to be moving: a cycle, a cat and then eventually my car as it came closer.

I slowed down even more, crossed the puppy and the stopped the car in the middle of the road. He was still following my car, but a little distracted. I really really wanted to get out of my seat, pick him up and take him home.

A thousand reasons existed then and exist now for why I cannot take home another animal. Most of them are related to my mother. I wanted to push them all out and bring him home. But somewhere, logic, cold, bitchy and calculating reason prevailed. I could not rescue him for a few days, and I could not remove him from the fight of the survival of the fittest to spoil him and then release him back to the wild.

So I drove off.

I cannot shake the image out of my mind. A dark T Junction with a orange yellow glow cast from one side the road. A little, black puppy rolling along, trying to belong to anything that moved. And I took a left and drove on.