certified severance

we thought we would name the dog long and dignified, as if by naming it after a baron years before deified in memory to the status of an apparition, it would come running when it was called in parks. we later shortened it to chico, because a dog bearing nine genderless names is a hazardous mouthful after seven if unleashed. bushes, grasses other. benches, it would sniff at the ledges of seat legs like an adolescent in a train station on his first leave from an exclusive boarding school. we should have known we found it mouth on mouse coming out from under the degrading foundation of a building that once had housed innumerable corseted sloths.