He didn’t want to tell me. He almost didn’t.It was luck much more than gut that made me askA beer opened an hour earlier than usual,the desire for conversation. There was no sense in methat he was in some sort of aftermath.He said, when I asked, I had a bad day,or, I had a weird day, I can’t remember.I saw a dog, he said. I was on the train.A man with a dog on a leash. The man ran and made itbut the dog hesitated outside, and the doors closed—no, not on his neck—on the leash, trapping it.The man was inside, and the dog was outside on the platform.The button beside the door, ringed in light, blinked.The man was shouting now, hitting the button,all else silent, the befuddlementof dog pulled along, the pace slow until it wasn’t.The tunnel the train must pass through leaving the stationis a perfectly calibrated, unforgiving fit.The dog had a color and a size I don’t know,so it comes to me as legion.Large. Small. Fur long, or short. White or gray.But the man always looks the same.As I held him against me in our kitchen,the moment sharpened my eyes. How easilyI could imagine a version of our livesin which he kept all his suffering secret from me.I saw the beer on the counter. I saw myself drink it.When we went to bed, I stared at the back of his headsplit between compassion and fury. My nailsgently scratching up his arm, up and down, up and down,the blade without which the guillotine is nothing.