When You Are Glad the Dog Throws Up and Wakes You

I looked out the window and R was loose and hanging out
with another dog, so I went outside and there was a big
gathering with a lot of people I know, like M and D,
and I was surprised that they weren't being careful, that none 
of them was being careful, a hundred people sitting very close
enjoying themselves, and I saw E from the past, who I don’t like. 
She was beautiful, more beautiful than when we were young, 
and I looked bad like I was in social isolation. I left with R, 
and we somehow got lost and then more lost. We were on the streets 
in a very big city, probably New York, and everyone
was packed in and didn’t seem to know or care about the virus. 
I tried to tell them, but they didn't listen and they were mean.
Next, I was sitting in a waiting room trying to remember my 
address but I never got further than 601 and my phone didn’t work. 
First no signal, then no phone app. Then, it turned into a flip phone. 
I wanted to find the police but where would I tell them to take me? 
Then A showed up, though he looked nothing like him. It turned out 
that B, who was suddenly with me and who was a boy again,
had called his dad for help. B’s phone worked, though he hadn’t
thought to mention it. The dog was gone, and A, or whoever he was, 
didn’t listen to anything I said and almost left without me. 
The worst part was how good E looked.

ξ

Originally from Washington, DC, Deborah Gang moved to Kalamazoo, MI to attend grad school and remained there, both for her work as a psychotherapist and the huge freshwater ocean to the west. Her research is published in Education & Treatment of Children, and her creative nonfiction is in Literary Mama, The Driftless Review, and Blue Stem Journal. Her poems are seen in Arsenic Lobster, The Michigan Poet, J Journal/CUNY, The Healing Muse/SUNY, and Flagler Review. She now writes full time and her novel, The Half-Life of Everything, was published in 2018.