Oscar
HANNAH HUTCHINSON
I never thought it would hurt to watch you
do your favourite thing.
You’re running with the birdsong
while I’ve run after a car
without memorising my way home.
What is a home
if not coming back to you?
What’s better than tin roof rain?
Your snores at the end of my bed.
Your highland cow sleeps with me now
Loved and worn.
Dips in the duvet
Slopes in the sofa
I watch all the empty spaces
for your face and feel numb.
The sky was so blue
endless azure fields
swatted away every cloud for your journey
as your wobbly legs asked to rest in the sun
with the blanket on the porch
for just one last time.
Your knowing nose sniffed the air in peace
while I wrestled with my mind
Can I get rid of your things?
The grey hairs on your whiskers
twitched with knowledge beyond your lifetime
despite your habit of running into walls
and the doonk doonk doonks
of your zooming puppy head
hitting the slats under my sister's bed.
Moving house becomes a horrible thing.
I no longer get to see your memory
projected onto the scene like a film
If only walls could make movies
How could someone move into that house
and not see the ghost of my dog?
Who
will wake up to the sound of your nails
tippy-tapping on those floorboards
as they tiptoed to my room?
Or know
where the comfy chair sat in the sun
the one you triumphantly claimed as yours?
Where the water from your lips would drop
and soak into my socks?
Where you’d roll around in the garden
and trail straw through the house?
How I wish
I could have those nuisances again.
Like the empty boxes, I stay
stagnant, resenting time
Every second.
Every second pulls me further away
‘New’ is now frightening
when every new thing will be the absence of you.
So, as stubborn as your bottom
I will see you walk with me
To places you’ve never been
In the reflection of bus windows
Across the street
From the cafe’s I sit in
In every butterfly
In every memory ever made
and in every moment passed
Until the end,
your breath will be my heartbeat.
We will run with the sails
parallel to the shore
sand kicked up towards a melted sky
pink orange yellow blue
Unleashed
galloping along the stretching path.
But for now,
my darling baby boy
until then,
go chase those birds
go and run forever.
In loving memory of Oscar, my home♡
Hannah Hutchinson (H. R. Harbour) is a passionate neurodivergent writer from the Central Coast, who specialises in Poetry, Fantasy-Adventure, Crime Fiction and the Creative Arts. She enjoys excavating the weird, discovering new and strange worlds, and adding trinkets to her collections. She hopes through her writing, she may bring a little magic back into readers’ everyday lives.
To find more of her work, follow her [@] hrh.writes on instagram.
