Dream of my Dogs

I dreamed last night of impossible births,
grey feathers shifting to fur,
chirps dancing beneath a strange oak table.

My two – Sig and Doof – lying there,
old eyes glistening with the weight of years,
straining
to give me their young.

Yet only strange half-creatures came.

I whispered to them, just one –
a perfect small Doof, a little Sig –
but the room knew better,
and it shuddered
as my husband’s hands
gathered tiny creatures, monstrously malformed,
parts of dreams that sour in daylight.

‘Did you end them?’ I gasped.
‘You’d have done the same,’ he said,
and I nodded,
truth sometimes wearing
the cloak of necessity.

There was a third dog,
a stranger, grey and fleeting.
He alone bore bright new life.

The pup chirped at the table’s leg.
I watched it, untouched.

When I asked my husband
how males could bear the weight of birth,
he answered with a reason lost to waking.
I agreed –
in dreams,
even logic is tender.

I woke to the soft thump
of tails and gentle snoring.
No puppies –
just Doof and Sig,
ageing,
but here.