Threshold, with Dog

The dog pulls me through brittle grass,
each stem a memory breaking
beneath our weight. Winter refuses snow—
the earth naked, honest in its dying.

From this hill, the city spreads
like my mother's hands opening
a map she cannot read. Okja,
she named me. A country
I've never seen, carried in two syllables.

The dog sniffs at emptiness,
at spaces where rabbits slept.
I am walking the border
between what was promised
and what remains. Below us,
lights flicker on—each window
a star we cannot touch.

In this snowless season, I practice forgetting: how to
say home in a language that fits my mouth. The dried
stalks whisper their brown music, and I translate: you
belong to the wind now, to the distance between your
name and its country.

The dog turns back, questioning.
I have no answer, only
this leash connecting us
to the world's unraveling,
to winter's refusal
to be beautiful, to be anything
but what it is: a season
waiting for permission to end.