Write a narrative on loss and war from the viewpoint of a dog.

Before the loud days, my boy smelled of bread.

He carried it home beneath his coat, warm against his ribs, and tore pieces for me when his mother wasn’t looking. She always knew. She would say his name sharply, then set a bowl beneath the table.

I knew their names as sounds. I knew them better as footsteps.

His mother dragged one heel when she was tired. His father’s boots struck the floor twice at the door, knocking away mud. My boy ran everywhere, even through the little house, even when there was nowhere to go.

Then the loud days came, and everyone learned to move slowly.

At first, the thunder lived beyond the hills. I barked to warn it away. My boy knelt beside me and held my ears between his hands.

“Just thunder,” he said.

But thunder smelled of rain. This brought smoke, and a bitter dust that settled in my water.

Men came to the house. Their boots were alike. They sat at the table without taking off their coats, and no one dropped any food. Afterward, my boy’s mother held him so tightly that he laughed into her hair.

The next morning, he put on strange clothes.

I followed him to the door. This was ordinary. We went out every morning. There were walls to inspect, pigeons to pursue, the butcher’s corner where patience sometimes earned a scrap.

But he told me to stay.

I sat.

He walked down the path.

I stood.

He turned and said it again, with the voice that made my legs obey even when the rest of me did not.

So I stayed.

For many days, I listened for his running.

His mother put one of his shirts in my basket. At first, it was almost enough. I could press my nose into the place beneath the sleeve and find him: bread, grass, the salt behind his knees.

Each night, there was less.

I learned to lie very still on the shirt. I stopped carrying it to the door.

Then his father went out and did not return either.

His mother began sleeping in her clothes. Sometimes she sat beside me on the floor and put her face against my neck. I held still for that, too, although her tears tickled inside my fur.

One night the windows burst inward.

I had been dreaming of a rabbit. Then the rabbit was gone, and the room was full of sharp things.

His mother crawled toward me. There was blood on her hand. She caught my collar and pulled, and we went beneath the stairs, where her breath came fast against my head.

The house shook until morning.

After that, we lived below the ground with other people.

There was a baby whose milk smelled sour. An old man coughed into a cloth. Everyone smelled afraid, even when they spoke softly.

Whenever feet passed above us, I lifted my head.

Once, I heard my boy.

I was certain of it. Three quick steps, a pause, then another. I pulled free and scrambled up into the daylight.

The man in the road turned when I reached him.

Wrong face. Wrong hands. Beneath the smoke and wool, wrong skin.

He pushed me away, not hard.

I returned underground. His mother took my head in her lap and said something over and over. I knew my boy’s name was in it.

The last time I saw her, the air was white.

There was a great shove beneath my feet. Her hand slipped from my collar.

For a while, I could hear nothing.

I found the stairs, but they ended in stone. I dug until my nails hurt. I put my nose into every opening. Somewhere underneath was the smell of her coat.

I stayed there through the dark.

In the morning, strangers pulled at me. I growled. Someone set down water. I drank, then went back to the stones.

Later, I went to our house.

The door lay flat in the street.

I waited beside it.

People passed carrying bundles. A cart went by with one wheel crying. I searched every pair of legs. Once, someone offered me bread, but when I lifted my head, they had already walked on.

Rain came. I crawled beneath the fallen door.

That was where the little girl found me.

She crouched a long way off. One of her shoes was fastened with string. She held out a piece of crust and waited until my hunger brought me close.

I took it from her fingers.

She did not try to touch me.

When she stood, I went back to the door. She walked a few steps, then stopped. I could hear her breathing.

Beyond her, a woman called.

The girl looked toward the voice. Then she looked at me.

I waited for another sound: quick feet on the road, my name, the soft slap of a hand against a thigh.

The girl began to walk.

At the corner, she stopped again.

I rose stiffly and followed her, looking back whenever the road allowed it.