When you left

 When you left,

the world felt smaller—
its colors muted,
its corners sharper,
its silence louder than I ever imagined silence could be.

Your pawprints stayed a while.
Pressed in blankets,
in dirt by the back door,
in the grooves of my memory
so deeply I thought they might hurt forever.

But love rearranges grief
in slow, gentle ways.

One day, I noticed the pawprints weren’t heavy anymore—
they were sacred.
Little echoes of the life you lived,
little reminders of how soft your presence was,
even in your final hours.

And then,
just when the ache started to feel familiar,
a rainbow appeared.
Not in the sky this time—
but inside me.

A soft wash of color
where the hurt had been.
A reminder that you didn’t just leave—
you transformed.

Your pawprints became lessons.
Your love became a light.
Your memory became a spectrum
of everything bright
you brought into my life.

Now, when I think of you,
I still feel the ache—
but it shines differently.
It glows with a kind of peace
I never expected to find.

Because that’s the story of losing a dog you love deeply:
Pawprints soften.
Love expands.
And somewhere in the space between sorrow and memory,
a rainbow appears.

Not to erase the grief,
but to show it the way forward.

Rainbows after pawprints.
Light after love.
And you,
always you,
somewhere in the color.