A Short Love Story

On showing up fully for what can’t last

May 03, 2026

When I agreed to foster two tiny senior chihuahuas, I knew almost nothing about them. They’d been left at the door of an animal shelter in Los Angeles the day before—no medical history, no behavioral notes, not even names.

Within a few days, the older of the two—who we anointed Nonna Ramona—began having seizures. She was disoriented, wobbly, sleeping most of the time, and losing weight. The vet put her on medication, but the seizures continued, growing longer, more frequent.

My journal entries morphed into seizure logs, all closely tracked with our amazing veterinary team:

March 28, 8:30am: 4-minute seizure. Spoke to vet.
April 7, 6pm: 15-minute seizure. Animal ER visit. Meds changed.
April 13, 7:30am: 14-minute seizure. Follow-up with vet. Dosage increased.
April 15, 3pm: 2-minute seizure. Vet notified.
April 16, 2:30pm: 20-minute seizure, followed by 3 min 40 sec seizure. Hard conversation about next steps with vet and rescue team.

Nonna Ramona was reclassified as a hospice foster. “Hon, if this is too much, I can take her back,” the head of the rescue told me. I had plenty of reasons to take the out: my own cancer treatment to navigate, a demanding work schedule, an already overfull life. And then there was the other question—the one everyone kept asking and I kept sidestepping: Won’t this be too hard?

I understood why my friends and family were asking. I’ve had to (and still have to) reckon with a lot when it comes to my own prognosis and what that means for my life. What they were really asking, I think, was: why invite more difficulty into a life that already contains its share?

It’s a fair question. And I understand the logic of it. I’ve had to withstand a lot since I was first diagnosed with leukemia at 22, and as a result, my relationship to pain has changed over time. There have been stretches of my life where I tried to get ahead of loss—loving cautiously, rationing attachment. But I’ve found that to moat myself off from pain is also to moat myself off from anything that might matter.

What I practice now is this: accepting that life is difficult, and moving toward the things I love anyway.

I don’t want to be someone who turns away.

Some things you have no choice but to endure. Caring for Nonna Ramona was different—it was a choice. A way to make a small creature’s life a little easier. Whatever it might cost me in heartache felt beside the point.

Plus, I was going in with my eyes open. I knew the terms: she was dying. I just needed to keep perspective. I thought of my childhood dream of becoming a vet—someone who could take the best care of an animal and remain, if not untouched, then at least able to compartmentalize. This I could do, I told myself.

I committed to keeping Nonna, and almost overnight, she has become the nexus of our lives. I give her everything I can—my time, my attention, the softest blankets in the house—in exchange for almost nothing I can point to. No fantasy of a long future. Just days. Weeks, if I’m lucky. And still, it doesn’t feel like a loss. The opposite.

When time shrinks, everything sharpens. A nap in a patch of sun becomes a picture-worthy moment. A slow walk to the water bowl feels like a victory. Every tail wag is cause for celebration. Despite my own best plans, I’ve fallen deeply in love with her.

Last week, even though she was on round-the-clock medication, Nonna had a forty-minute seizure and we nearly lost her. At the emergency vet, I was given two options: let her go, or admit her and try a different medication that might extend her life. Neither option felt like mercy. One required me to end her life, possibly prematurely. The other required me to prolong it at a cost she couldn’t understand—an overnight stay, more interventions, more side effects—with no promise of permanent relief.

It’s the kind of decision that doesn’t resolve. It only asks you to decide which uncertainty you can live with.

It’s been twelve days since starting the new meds, and Nonna hasn’t had a single seizure. Earlier this week, I sat on my porch and watched her have her best day yet. She tiptoed onto the dewy grass, froze, then decided to scamper across the lawn anyway. She investigated every dandelion as if it were a revelation. She is ravenous at mealtime and putting on weight. She’s even started to play. I’ve had the joy of watching her find her place in the small, shifting order of my pack of pups.

The medication is working, for now. But the reality of her condition still holds. This will be a short love story. No illusions of forever. No tidy arc. Just a simple promise: you will not be alone for this part.

I used to think love was proven over time—accumulated, measured in years. But this experience has me reconsidering. Maybe love has nothing to do with time at all. Maybe it’s the decision to show up fully for something fragile and fleeting, even when you know it will break your heart. Especially then.

And maybe this is true beyond love, too. Maybe the question isn’t how we protect ourselves from what we don’t know, but whether we’re willing to step toward it—to stay with it long enough for something to reveal itself.

The poet Marie Howe once said that writing is a way of discovering what we don’t yet know—that a poem is an experience that brings us to something we couldn’t have imagined before it began. That’s what this has felt like: not knowing—and staying anyway, being changed by what unfolds.

This week’s poem and prompt, by ire’ne lara silva, former poet laureate of Texas, begins in that same place: not with certainty, but with negation. With what isn’t. With what can’t quite be named directly. And from there, something unfurls.

Prompt 382. i didn’t eat the sun by ire’ne lara silva

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

but
          it
                    poured
                                          into
                                                          me
 
I didn’t eat the ocean but the waves of the
south the east the west and the north
lapped against my feet and my soles drank
in the salt water i didn’t eat the roads but a
thousand miles of asphalt rebuilt my bones
filling in all the fault lines all the places worn
down to breakage i didn’t eat the monte but
the earth the scent of earth the scent of
monte the scent of lluvia filled me and filled
me and remade my flesh i didn’t run with the
coyotes but i howled with them i howled with
them and
 
remembered
                        what
                                   freedom
                                                     was
 
I didn’t eat the wind but it found my mouth
and poured in and i felt my wings my
shriveled long forgotten wings filling and
stretching and reaching and unfolding how
was it i’d forgotten myself how was it i’d
collapsed and collapsed in on myself i didn't
eat the sun but all the light came streaming
in and oh with what gladness with what
relief with what joy i received it so much
light when i hadn't even known
 
i’d
        been
                      sitting
                                      in
                                              the
                                                         Dark

This is your prompt:

Write toward something you don’t fully understand—by naming what it isn’t.

Begin with absence, with refusal, with the edge of knowing.

You might start with:
“I didn’t eat the sun…”

Or:
“Not I, not I, but…”

“Not exactly ___, closer to”

“We cannot know…”

Let the sentence open a door. Follow it. See what begins to take shape in the space of what you cannot name directly.

A soundtrack for writing toward the not-yet-named:

I’d love to hear what this prompt brought up for you. Feel free to share in the comments.

Today’s Contributor—

ire’ne lara silva, the 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently the eaters of flowers, which received Gold for the 2025 Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book from the International Latino Book Awards. She is also the author of two chapbooks, a comic book, and a short story collection, flesh to bone, which won the Premio Aztlán. Her honors include the 2026 Jessie H. Jones Fellowship, the 2025 Poetry Rising Star Award (ILBA), the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction, and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award. Her second short story collection, the light of your body, will be published by Arte Público Press in spring 2026.