My husband is in Japan.

He’s in Japan

and this week, as a single parent, has been challenging

but we’ve been okay.

The kids have all been wonderful, helpful

and I thought that we were going to get through the week just fine.

Then last night the small sausage dog was hit by a car

and it’s not alright anymore.

He has a broken pelvis and he’s still at the vet’s this morning.

I just want to make it all better.

I want to take back time to before he escaped

before the kids ran frantically up and down the streets of the small rural community,

torch lights wavering and jiggling in the sky as they ran towards the night,

calling his name, so urgently, so fervently I thought my heart might break,

before they came back defeated and crying, their faces bleak and chapped by the tears and the wind.

Before we discovered that he’d made it home somehow and found him scared beyond belief underneath the verandah,

his back legs no longer working

his little sausage dog face cut and bleeding.

I want to take it all back to when I felt as though I may just be able to make it;

where everything was still okay.

I want it to be just me, hurt and broken

not the kids, who are fearful that we will lose another dog to, what they lovingly refer to as, ‘the curse’

not the pre schoolers, who are trying very hard to understand what just happened over a couple of hours, late on a Wednesday evening

and certainly not the small sausage dog, who came into our lives and softened our hardened spirits.