Practicing Faith by Lissa Staples

He confides in me that his sister goes outside every day and whistles for her dog, even though the animal was stolen over twenty years ago, and that passers-by routinely stop to ask what the dog looks like. She’ll describe a brown canine of no discernible bloodline from a time when she fancied herself a dog whisperer, back when she could run fifteen effortless miles in the mountains with her husband and the dog at her sides, and she might add that dogs can be a thousand miles away and still find their way home, guided by instinct and a need to be with their human pack. But that was before the night her husband drove off with the dog, leaving everything else behind including the mortgage, the snowblower and the hand-painted bowl from Deruta, Italy, where they had fallen in love over ripe olives, their hands never not touching, when they were just a family of two. Before she realized that instinct will lead a lost soul home sooner than love.

Lissa Staples  is a classical singer who migrates between Tucson, AZ and Port Townsend, WA. She writes short stories, poetry and flash fiction. Her short story, “Mrs. Rowe” appears in the February 2019 issue of The Write Launch. 

Source photo by Kylli Kittus, digitally degraded by Dale Wisely