25/12/2025
Where Your Pawprints Remain 🐾🌙
I never realized how much of my heart you carried
until the day I felt the weight of your absence.
The house still holds your presence—
your bed in the corner, your leash by the door,
your toys lying silent as though waiting for you to return.
Everywhere I turn, I see you,
and yet when I reach out, my hands close on nothing but air.
I remember the mornings when you bounded toward me,
tail wagging like the world itself had been remade in joy.
I remember the way you looked at me,
your eyes so full of trust it made me believe
I was worthy of love even on the days I could not love myself.
I remember the quiet nights,
when you pressed close as if your small body could shield me
from sorrow too heavy to bear.
And perhaps it did,
because somehow, with you near, I always found the strength to go on.
How do I thank you for a lifetime of devotion?
How do I repay the countless ways you saved me,
not with words, not with answers,
but with presence—
with the steady, unwavering promise that I was never alone?
You never asked for riches,
never cared for tomorrow’s worries;
your only desire was to be with me,
and in that, you gave me everything.
Now the silence feels endless.
I find myself listening for your paws in the hallway,
for your bark at the window,
for the rhythm of your breath in the dark.
And though my heart shatters at the emptiness,
I know this:
love like yours does not die.
It lingers in the corners of memory,
it beats in the quiet spaces of the soul,
it becomes the echo that carries me forward
even when I feel too broken to move.
One day, my friend,
when my own journey comes to an end,
I will look for you.
And I know you will be there—
young again, strong again,
racing toward me with ears flying and tail wagging,
as though no years have passed at all.
Until that day,
I will carry you within me,
in every tear, in every smile,
in every step on this long road.
Because you were not just my dog.
You were my family.
You were my heart.
And you always will be.