Sleep

Doctor Dog sleeps upside down with his puffy black nose pressed under a velvety monkey blanket and his left paw against the boy’s left leg. The boy, who is in the soccer pajamas, can barely be seen underneath Little Monkey, Big Monkey, Matt the Jaguar, and Gar Gar the Leopard and his new red panda with a raccoon tail that has yet to be named. Beneath the plush zoo rests an intricate jig-jaw puzzle of flesh and bone pieced together with zigzag stitches, tinged in young blood. From below his earlobe around to the back of his head, straight up to the tip of his forehead, until a lightning bolt accents his purplish-bluish-greenish skin. He is not Harry Potter. His story is real. A story that will grow as he grows. Motorcycle accident? Knife fight? Thrown from horse? Trampled by soccer cleats? As many possibilities, as there are stitches. The stories will be sewn and woven in time, but for now, he sleeps. No shakes, seizures, twitches, trembles, shudders, shivers, quivers or quavers. A body at peace, at last.