Way back when, I’d lure the dog up into the indent on the empty side of the bed, where he’d arch his back along the comforter’s fold, sigh, slump, and twitch through sheep meadow dreams. His heart beat through my skin. I’d imagine him gone, you know, in self-preparation, pointlessly.

A Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, J.P. Grasser is a PhD candidate at the University of Utah, where he edits Quarterly West.