The Three-Legged Dog

By Peter Bowden


In the soft hours of the afternoon, when the trees whispered secrets and the grass shimmered like a green sea, I saw him — a dog, bright-eyed and sure, racing across the earth on three good legs and a heart too big to notice the missing one.

He was a wonder stitched from sunlight and stubbornness, the kind of creature that makes children forget their games and old men lower their newspapers, grinning behind the rims of their glasses. He bounded, he leapt, he flew, as if some unseen hand had plucked away the extra weight so he could move faster toward the joy waiting just beyond the trees.

No sadness clung to him. No heavy questions. No thoughts of what was lost. Only the day, only the breathless chase, only the warm, unseen music that lifted him up and carried him along. And watching him, I thought: if only we all could be so wise — to lose something and not feel less, but somehow, impossibly, to feel more.

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