Throughout my life, I have raised dogs, cats, chickens, canaries, skunks, and rabbits.
Cows and black goats belonged to others, but the rest—those were lives I chose to care for.
The worst companions were those with whom no emotional connection could be made—
no communication, no resonance.
The best were the ones who believed in me, wholly and without condition.
Not as master and pet, but as equals.
More than friends—soulmates.
That special bond, that memory, still lives vividly inside me.
Their touch, their gaze, the atmosphere of that moment—
and the emotions I felt then—
have taken up an entire space in the finite storage of my brain.
Though more than thirty years have passed,
the memory of that friend remains unblurred.
It is the purest crystal,
a data point firmer and more eternal than anything else.
As humans, we live with limited space for memory and emotion.
What shall we choose to keep in our inner drawers?
I want to empty out the darkness,
erase the thoughts that pull me into denial and despair.
Instead, I want to fill that space with what is beautiful, warm, and true—
with memories like that:
of trust, of love, of a soul once beside mine.
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