Bone Burying

By Andrea Gibson

"My dog Squash has recently discovered the art of bone burying. Whenever I give her a bone she will spend a good hour or so looking for the perfect burying place. The order typically goes something like this: under the couch cushion, under the couch, under the kitchen broom, under the bedroom curtain, under the living room plant, behind the guitar, behind the suitcase, under the chair pillow, and then finally-always-she eventually decides to bury the bone under ME. Wherever I am sitting in the house, she will find me, jump up in the chair with me, and start burying the bone under one of my thighs. After that, every time, she jumps down, gives me a satisfied look, then falls asleep on the floor.

Lately I’ve been spending a good part of nearly every day thinking about love. Romantic love. The kind of love that involves french kissing and mix tapes and spooning in New York City in the summer when it’s by most people’s standards too disgustingly humid to spoon. The kind of love you wanna bring home to your grandma and say, “Grandma, look at this love! Just look at this LOVE!” Lately I’ve been thinking about who I want to love, and how I want to love, and why I want to love the way I want to love, and what I need to learn to love that way, and who I need to become to become the kind of love I want to be…….and when I break it all down, when I whittle it into a single breath, it essentially comes out like this: Before I die, I want to be somebody’s favorite hiding place, the place they can put everything they know they need to survive, every secret, every solitude, every nervous prayer, and be absolutely certain I will keep it safe. I will keep it safe."