Black Dog (Approach)

Here it is again.

Familiar but in different incarnation.

After my first startled glance I eye it now and then.  It is still some distance off, maybe, silhouetted, or perhaps has sprung at me from cover.  It waits, and even while my gaze is fixed elsewhere I know it regards me.

I take its measure: what will you be this time?  Cannot tell until it is upon me: understated/sorrowful/poignant/joy-tinged/terrible/overwhelming/empty/consuming/alarming/disappointing - or something new?

I am wary as we meet. It greets me in its fashion.  It passes.  It will pass again, familiar yet not.
It is the anniversary
of our meeting
our marriage
the birth of our child
the first time he kissed me
our weekly date
the making of coffee
of the surgery, the needles, the seizures, the silence -
it is the anniversary of the beginning
of the end
of all the days that didn't used to matter.