sadly, you have somewhere to be

The metallic lift doors opened. António stepped onto the lobby floor, covered in a chequered mosaic of red, grey, and black granite. He crossed it and reached the front door.

Heat struck his bare arms and legs as he left the air-conditioned interior.

He sat on the patch of grass facing the block of flats, waiting for Matilde. His mum’s aloe vera peeked above the balustrade on the first floor; its spotty green arms and sharp spines cut against the pink ceramic tiles of the façade.

To the right, he noticed Yuna’s eyes behind the bedroom window, then her shiny black nose and neatly folded ears at the top of her long head. Each time he left the flat, she ran to this window to watch him from above, standing upright on her muscular back legs, front paws resting on the ledge.

As a small, round puppy, Yuna cried so much at night that António would place her beside him in bed to calm her. He named her and spent that winter and spring at home with her. When he left to study abroad the following summer, she had already grown into an athletic blue whippet. Years later, Yuna still slipped under his sheets at night and followed him from room to room whenever he stayed over.

Matilde appeared from behind a yellow building at the corner. António waved and smiled.

“I’m so glad we get to see each other one more time before being separated,” she said, hugging him.

Matilde smelled of tuberose, jasmine, and honeysuckle. António had met her over a decade earlier, in high school; even then, her arms were tattooed with butterflies, her ribs with flowers, her neck with stars. She wore a strapless silver dress embroidered with blue daisies. Her nails were painted purple. Her latest tattoo, a swallowtail butterfly on her forearm, was still covered with a bandage.

“Thank you for coming at the last minute,” António said. “I’m flying back to London after lunch, but I needed to talk to you about what happened last night with Yuna. Oscar would never believe me. Look — she’s spying on us from up there.”

Matilde waved. Yuna jumped into view behind the window.

They began walking, leaving Yuna’s gaze, along a track lined with mature tulip trees.

“During my visits home,” António said, “I’ve noticed how Yuna sometimes sits alone on the couch, watching TV in a human way.”

Matilde glanced at him. “That’s unsettling.”

“She ignores other dogs,” he said. “She refuses her reflection. She turns her head away every time I hold her in front of a mirror.”

“I think most dogs do that,” Matilde said. “They lose interest.”

“No,” António said. “What happened last night wasn’t ordinary. Or at least, I don’t think it was. I might be confusing dreams and reality.”

They sat on a stone bench facing an old fountain with cherubs riding swans, their horns leaking thin streams of water.

“You know I won’t judge you,” Matilde said. “Go on.”

“When Yuna saw my open suitcase on the bed, she knew I was leaving again. Her movements slowed. Her head dropped. She walked toward me and pressed her head against my shoulder. I started crying. And then she—” He stopped. “She sang a poem.”

Matilde waited.

“What was her voice like?” she asked. “Do you remember it?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget. It was very low. I wrote it down this morning.”

António unfolded a piece of paper from his chest pocket. As he read, Matilde felt the skin beneath the bandage on her forearm flutter.

Yuno always…
Wants to see a dream.
What I’m thinking,
I want to try and put in a poem,
So my little heart,
can reach out to you a little.

— poem adapted from a 1982 song by Matsuda Seiko