The Day They Ran Away

I walked out the door and there it was.
Oh my God, I saw the apocalypse.
I saw the wind and the rain and the end of the world.
The sheets of clouds where as unreal as the unlatched gate slamming into its frame, again, again, again.
They were not where they should have been.
Not at all where they should have been.

I ran out the gate and slid through the same mud that they did.
The asphalt was my destination, but it took years to get there.
I’ve never seen a slow motion scene in my front yard since that storming hell of a day.
I watched them fly toward the street; the rain-slicked street and the only car of the hour.
I was 30 seconds from catching them.

Things had run away before, and things will run away again.
But nothing is worse than watching your dogs die.
Forty-miles-per-hour and a canine’s momentum can scar a kid for life.