Today I will celebrate all that is lovely in the world,

beginning with the Papillon who is losing the use of his legs, tutu-ing his hips. I
don’t think myelopathy. I don’t think paralysis. I don’t think 17 years is long enough

for a pet, don’t think lucky. When I see him crab-step, scythe into himself, I think instead
how he is the pause of a chrysalis, cerulean parabola of a wing. In the butterfly garden,

joining me to check on those just hatched from their pupae as they dry the freshly carved
lapidaries sprouting from their bodies, notched like his un-flickering ears, I ignore the cobalt

nodules that have germinated from his head and back, how his limbs look more like leaded
pencils than bones. I prefer to see the way his still-silvery frill of tail picks up from the grass

royal poinciana and crepe myrtle flowers so that he is garlanded, a holiday of a dog who
trails petals behind, ultramarine potpourri. As we watch the monarchs munch milkweed into

veils, I think about how dying stars ash themselves into sparks for new ones, how quartz
xenoliths, consumed, can never completely camouflage their light. Such radiance, this

zoogeography of cause and effect, and I’m here to benefit even though it’s not meant for me.

Jen Karetnick’s fourth full-length book is The Burning Where Breath Used to Be (David Robert Books, September 2020), an Eric Hoffer Poetry Category Finalist and a Kops-Fetherling Honorable Mention. She is also the author of Hunger Until It’s Pain (Salmon Poetry, forthcoming spring 2023) in addition to six other collections. Karetnick has won the Tiferet Writing Contest for Poetry, the Split Rock Review Chapbook Competition, the Hart Crane Memorial Prize, and the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Prize, among others. Co-founder and managing editor of SWWIM Every Day, she has work appearing recently in Barrow Street, The Comstock Review, december, Michigan Quarterly Review, Terrain.org, and elsewhere. Based in Miami, she works as a lifestyle journalist, co-author of the garden-to-table newsletter Dishtillery, and the author of four cookbooks, four guidebooks, and more. Find her on Twitter @Kavetchnik and Instagram @JenKaretnick, or see jkaretnick.com.