A look at the poems in YOU AGAIN—where they came from, what inspired them, and what they mean to me now. This is Afterwords.
Samantha
I wasn’t a dog person until I met her. Now, whenever I come home, she runs, slides, and bounces on her hind legs.
She throws herself at me, all paws, nails, and silky champagne, wet nose, and Milk-Bone® breath. Triumphantly, she pants. Her battery heart thumps. Her eyes widen as far as they can, as if shouting, “At last! At last!”
Ever since I’ve lived alone, I’ve appreciated her more than I ever thought I could. How sweet it would be to keep her in my life forever. If anyone at all: Samantha.
There are several poems from YOU AGAIN about my silky terrier, Samantha, and for good reason: she was a shining light in my life for almost 16 years. When I was revisiting old journals in preparation for this book, the entries about her made me pause. Here was a love so pure, it wasn’t like any of the others I had collected so far. I ended up including the poem “Samantha” knowing I wanted to cement her into this little history of my life, along with all the other people I wrote about. She certainly deserved it more than others.
In the spring of 2024 when she was 15, she got sick, and then worse, fast, and I had to make the excruciating decision of saying goodbye. It was the most difficult thing I ever had to do. Two years later, I still can’t think about it without crying.
Now That I’ve Seen The Light Go Out
I used to wonder how eventually
I would lose her.
How exactly would she break my heart?
I’d worry about a dozen different ways:
A house fire while I was away
Accidental carbon monoxide poisoning
Getting hit by a car
At the vet during a dental cleaning
Getting attacked by a bigger dog
And somehow, much worse
But now that I’ve seen the light go out
of her big, brown eyes
on a towel-padded hospital table at 12:20
on a sunny Friday in May,
I don’t have to wonder anymore.
That summer, I took a break from working on YOU AGAIN as I crawled through grief. Bereft and emotional, I wrote “Now That I’ve Seen The Light Go Out,” which was originally a diary entry I wrote a week after she passed. At first, I was hesitant to share it. It was darker than my others and portrayed my anxious mind in a way that embarrassed me. But after speaking to multiple pet owners who lost their fur babies, I realized it was yet another common thought people have that no one wants to talk about. So I decided that person would be me.
For years, I worried about the moment I would lose her. And now that I had, and as awful as it sounds, I felt like I could finally relax a little. I was always so anxious about how her life would end, but I knew the ending now. Now, it was one less anxious thought in my brain, one less thing to worry about. And for that, I felt both guilty and relieved; I loved her so much.
Grief
The vacuum cleaner blazes
a path of clean lines
in the old, worn rug, stopping short
of dropped, forgotten crumbs
completely foreign to me.
Squinting, I crouch down to see
a family of ants enjoying
their feast. And for the first time
in a week, I burst into tears,
thinking, this wouldn’t have happened
if my dog were still here.
I wrote “Grief” in the middle of cleaning one afternoon. It spilled out of me with my tears that day. I held the words in my head as I wept on the floor, then jotted them down before they escaped. After looking at these three pieces as a whole, I realized a piece was missing: “August 2023.” It was a diary entry I wrote after what would be her last birthday. In hindsight, I was saying goodbye then, and for months and months after. It felt like the bridge between before and after, too important to leave to the imagination. It was also a piece about my grandfather, who I thought about a lot in Sam’s final months, because of what he said to me—half humorous, half honest—about getting old. We are all so lucky to ever get old—but it still hurts all the same.
August 2023
My dog is getting old. She recently had her 15th birthday (with a birthday hat she hated and a picnic in the park she loved) and is very much an old lady. We go for leisurely walks around the block now, almost at a turtle’s pace, and I have accepted that the days of her zipping around the apartment and the lawn are forever gone. She stops to sniff or lick almost everything now (either because she’s curious or because she can’t rely solely on her vision anymore) and is losing strength in her hind legs. Because of this, she trips over herself sometimes. Each time, I reach down, pick her up, massage her legs, then set her down again. She pitter-patters on like nothing happened.
She’s starting to lose her hearing, too. Sometimes, when I come home early from work and find her curled up in her bed five feet from the door, she doesn’t hear me. I call her name several times before she notices, gets up, and greets me clumsily. Sometimes I have to walk over and gently wake her. She hasn’t barked at the sound of the doorbell in months, but will come prancing from the bedroom the second I tear open a pack of peanut butter crackers in the kitchen. I think, just like a teenager, she picks and chooses what she wants to hear.
She is definitely the grandma on the block. Multiple neighbors stop and say hi to her when we are on our walks with a look of sweetness and sympathy. She mostly ignores them and no longer acknowledges other dogs, squirrels, or birds. She has, however, recently forgotten herself and tried to chase after a bunny.
Sometimes, when I’m coming back from the vet, or updating her medicine chart on the fridge so I don’t mix up what needs to be taken and when, I hear my Grandpa’s voice in my head. Once, after he had a stroke, I went with him to a doctor’s appointment. It was a standard checkup, but I was worried and wanted to be there for him. He looked over at me sadly. We didn’t know it at the time, but he would pass away a few months later.
“Don’t get old,” he said.
YOU AGAIN is a collection that captures all the stages of love and loss through all kinds of relationships—family included. And Samantha was definitely family. More than family, even. Somehow. Whatever more than family is.
I know I’ll see you again someday, little dog.
See you back here soon for the next poem.
Want To See A Particular Poem Covered In This Series?
If you have a poem from YOU AGAIN you’d like me to write about, please email me at hello@meganportorreal.com. You may also DM me on Threads or Instagram, or leave a comment below.
