Almost every morning, I wake up with no cigarettes and leg cramps. It's May now and already the heat coats your skin until it feels like you're carrying the entire summer on your body. The magnolia trees have been blooming and sometimes the smell of wilting flowers fills you up so much, it makes the world tilt a little in your brain and the last thing you should be doing is walking around. But I have no cigarettes and leg cramps, and besides, the house starts to whisper things you can never understand when you're alone in there for too long, so maybe I will walk to the corner store.

I will.

On my way there, I see a man in a suit walking his old red dog in the ditch by my house. I like this dog because it looks like my friend's dog and my friend is dead now, so every little reminder, every piece of that time, sinks into my heart a little more and I wave whenever I see them out. I think about saying, "Looking sharp" or maybe something about dressing fancy when you take your dog out to shit, but decide not to. I haven't been talking much this morning and sometimes when that happens, my voice comes out funny. I don't really talk to anyone anymore and I worry that I'll forget how to make sounds with my throat or which parts of my mouth my tongue needs to touch to say certain words. What if someone is dying in a crowd of people and I'm the only one who can see this? How will I get them help? What if I'm dying? I get upset and miss people and my voice, my not funny voice, and everything just seems so far away. So sometimes it's best to not say anything at all.

My eyes are down, watching the trash parade past my line of sight. Kentucky Fried Chicken bag, Coke can, Miller can, white T-shirt with the armpits ripped out, diaper folded like a gardenia, black tail, black hind legs, soft, black stomach. The flies have already begun to swirl around her head like some horrible halo. I can't look away fast enough so I take it all in.

When I hand the clerk my five-dollar bill, I see the blue of the dog's collar in his eyes.

Coming back, I see a black sedan with yellow flashing lights and FUNERAL lit up on the roof like TAXI or PIZZA. It's parked outside the man's house and there are more cars, normal cars with nicely dressed people sitting inside. These cars are starting to line up and you would think people would be yelling directions like "go this way" or "you go ahead of me" but everything is very, very quiet. I think I can hear the ladies' dresses rustling in the stiff breeze, but it's just dead leaves and plastic bags from the corner store.

I slow down and try to remember everything I know about funerals and wakes and is it bad luck to cross in front of a funeral procession even if it's not procession-ing yet? There were a lot of cars at that house last night, pretty late, too, so does that mean there was a viewing? Did the man sleep with a dead body in the house? A dead loved one? Did the old red dog know anything was up or did he just shuffle around and sniff people before falling asleep in the middle of everything, like I know old dogs are apt to do? Did the old dog know the dead person? Is he going to the funeral, too?

Instead of going past the cars, I turn onto a side street and keep walking.

I think that beauty follows death wherever it goes.

In the days following my friend's death, everything was beautiful. Colors became what I thought Christians imagined people becoming when they went to heaven. The red of the hibiscus was somehow better, more pure, like what happens to you when Jesus takes you in or something. I began to understand why black, the complete absence of color, was the choice for the grieving. Everything moved very aware of everything else and all music went along with the flashing motel signs and radio tower lights. My heart was always beating too fast those days.

The first thing I notice are the egrets.

Two egrets, standing four feet apart in the gutter, in identical positions. Legs splayed at a forty-five degree angle, heads tilted up toward the sun with the crest floating behind on the stale air, like I caught them in the middle of a ballet and time stopped because humans are not allowed to see birds dance like that. I feel guilty seeing this, scared that if I move too fast or look too long, they will fly away. So I move slowly, eyes to the left. Keep dancing, I never saw you.

But I see the flower.

A flower in someone's dirt yard, just sitting there, looking too lush, almost obscene with fleshy petals and pink edges and something red right in the middle, suggesting that maybe if God created something like this, he does, in fact, have a libido. I stare and stare and wait for it to maybe vaporize or blink into nothing but another dirty diaper or maybe just dirt. The flower remains a flower and I start to feel something odd creep into my skull. Like maybe someone is filming this or I'm about to wake up.

So I keep moving.

The motion in my chest is starting to scare me; nothing on me is supposed to feel this alive anymore, so I cut through the empty lot and start back to the house. I can hear dogs barking and kids yelling about catching and retrieving and I wonder if the dead dog has a family. Had a family. Are they still looking for her? Who bought the collar and who put it around her neck? My old dog used to hide her heartworm medicine under her tongue and then spit it out in a hidden place when no one was looking. Did the dead dog do something like this? What was her name?

Going back is more about instinct than an act of free will.

All I can do is move her to the side of the road and place a few bunches of little yellow weed-flowers onto that soft, black stomach.

In the evening I smoke my last cigarette and sit on the back stoop as the air turns blue and the cicadas sing do-re-mi. The man and his old red dog are out again, the man trailing his fingers across the metal barricade along the ditch and the dog lumbering along behind him like a myopic bear, stopping every once in awhile to sniff something. The jacket is gone, shirt un-tucked, but he's still in his fancy pants, and the tie is trailing from the hand holding the leash. They walk past me and I can't help but get up and follow them. Not too close, can't risk having a conversation, not with my voice coming out all funny. Just watch, I think.

The man and his old dog turn the corner and I slow down even more. They are heading up the road, toward the dead dog and I almost yell for them to not go that way, to maybe go down that side street and see the flower or maybe even an egret feather in the road, white against black. Just don't go that way, I think. But they do and when they are in view again, the man has stopped in front of the corpse and is just staring. Staring like he is waiting for it to get up and he'll have to break up a dogfight. He is holding the leash as far away as possible and the old dog strains and shivers.

It isn't even a choice now. Just watch.

The man bows his head and I can see the outline of his lips in the streetlight behind him. They are moving, saying something, and then his free hand makes the sign of the cross over his heart. A prayer for the dead dog.

I'm not expecting him to turn around so fast, but he sees me and I freeze. There is no way to avoid this now. He's walking toward me, watching me, probably already knows that I know what happened to him because that's how it always is after death. Everyone knows, it seems, even if they don't and you can't ever get away from it. So you just stop talking. I shove my hands in my pockets and wait.

"Did you do that?" he asks, pointing at the now shadow of a body on the side of the road. The flowers I left seem to be growing from the black shape.

I nod.

He looks back, wraps the tie around his hand once, twice. He turns toward me again.

"That was nice," he says. The old dog has found the diaper blossom and is pushing his white snout into all the folds. The man gives the leash a little tug. "It ain't right to be leaving the poor girl out all night like that, though. Raccoons'll get her. I think later tonight, once all the folks leave and it's quiet again, I'll come out and give her a proper burial…." He trails off, watching something in the sky over my head. "It just ain't right to be leaving her like that," he says, finally.

My voice. Oh, god.

I work the muscles in my throat, roll and unroll my tongue, touching different parts of my mouth with it, trying to see if anything seems familiar, instinctual, roads traveled so many times, you anticipate each bump. I know it's there. I fucking know it.

He's looking at me now and the old red dog is looking, too. Swallow once, twice. One more roll.

There.

"I'll help."

Monica Wrobel is a 25-year-old resident of Dunedin, Fla. She works as a circulation clerk at the Largo Public Library. She has won a few awards for her stories and plays, and has been published once before (in Creative Loafing, of all places — see Editor's Note). She once had a pet duck. "May" is part of a series of stories about the year following a death.

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