Cosmic Lights (or An Ode to Zoe)
Light can be faint, especially when overshadowed by a circumambient darkness that seems never ending. Light can also be blinding, when it dominates, forcing all others to be secondary or in some way bend to its will.
I remember walking into K’s house and Zoe immediately running to me, licking my feet. Up to that moment, I’d never been fully comfortable with dogs, having had a couple of unsavoury experiences in the past, and my first instinct was to pull away. Still, as K made to place her in the kitchen, ostensibly for my own protection, her almost sad barks found a way to tear at my heart strings. Looking back now, I think she sort of knew they would, the same way children instinctively know to make puppy faces to get their way.
And as I asked K to let her out, Zoe proved to be a really sweet being, loving and very energetic. She would pick her battered bottle and bring towards me only to sharply turn, as though she didn’t want me to have it. Still, when I ignored her, she’d return, with all her nyanga, playing ‘hard-to-get’, a trait a certain demographic of the Nigerian populace are often alleged to exhibit… When I’d finally get the bottle and throw it as far as I could, she’d run excitedly, trying to catch it before it fell, and return proudly with it, as though saying “I got game, bro.” And we would repeat the process, each time extending the feeling of warmth somewhere within me.
It is a bit odd writing of her in past tense as it’s barely a month since I saw her, with the memories of her soft fur being smoothened by my palms seeming so fresh. It is easy to tell that Zoe loved to play and she loved humans. She spread love and was easy to love. I remember thinking that, having Zoe in a house, it would be fairly impossible to feel unloved. She just would not give you the space to feel that way, to feel like no one cared, because she was very expressive. She was very present.
Beyond the sadness of having lost her, I feel a fair amount of gratitude. While it was only for three or so hours, I am thankful I got to know her. And in her own doggy way, she left her mark on me. She allowed me move from having a bit of cynophobia to being her friend (well, I hope she thought I was). She showed that life can be fun when we open ourselves to new experiences and do not hold back in showing how we feel. She lived her life willing to go for what she wanted, perhaps because that was really the only way she knew how to.
Some lights aren’t meant to shine forever, briefly illuminating and then flickering out. Yet some others, long after they are gone, leave the surfaces they beamed on fully affected because of how fiercely they existed for however short they did, at once brilliant and gentle.
Zoe was just such a light, I believe.
