The Sky Turned Into Silence

By Talia Tanachian / Spring 2025

At first, it was just the door. It used to open every morning. Like clockwork. Sometimes with a jingle, sometimes with a thud, sometimes creaking on days when the rain got into the wood.

And then one day... it just didn’t.

I sat. I waited. I scratched at the baseboard for a while, then I lay down with my chin on the tile. The bowl had water. The dry food still tasted like cardboard. But something was off. And I didn’t have the words for it, because, well, I’m a dog.

But I knew. The world had closed.

They call me Waffles. I didn’t choose the name. It was shouted at me once in the backyard, and I turned around, and then it stuck. It sounded happy when they said it. Full of joy. So I let it become mine.

Back when names meant something. Back when the sky was a real thing, not just a memory pressed behind a pane of glass. Before everything slowed down and hardened and dulled like stale bread. Before the girl, Sophie, stopped giggling when I shook my wet fur onto the couch and started sitting like a statue in the same corner of the room, day after day, glowing blue screen in hand, headphones in, soul gone.

I noticed mom stopped cooking. Stopped singing in the kitchen. Just stood there some nights, holding a mug she never drank from. She would just stare at the floor sometimes, holding her coffee until it went cold. I’d nudge her knee and she’d smile like she meant it. But not really. I noticed that dad's voice grew quieter but angrier. Once, I pawed at his lap. Just a reminder. A hey, I’m still here. He patted me without even looking. Three stiff taps. Like I was a piece of furniture that had shifted slightly out of place.

I didn’t try again after that.

I used to wait by the back door. Every day.

With my tail curled and my eyes wide. I brought the leash, dropped it at their feet, and sat up as straight as I could. Wagged with all the hope I could possibly gather.

Nothing.

They’d glance. Maybe smile. Maybe say “not today, buddy.” Eventually... they stopped glancing.

Eventually, I stopped bringing the leash.

And then I stopped waiting by the door.

I started curling up by the heater vent. It was warm there. Quiet. I could pretend the world outside was still moving. I could pretend I’d just gone out, and come back in, and everything was fine. But my legs started to ache. My body began to feel heavy. I’d see squirrels I couldn’t chase, sticks I couldn’t pick up. I didn’t bark at the mailman anymore. I didn’t twitch at birds. I didn’t even lift my head when the doorbell rang.

I slept.

Not because I was tired, but because it was easier than being awake.

I noticed the wind stopped coming through the back door. It hadn’t been opened in weeks. It became a wall like all the others.

You think dogs don’t notice when people leave the room without physically walking out of it? We notice.

We notice everything.

I noticed the way they passed each other in the hallway without speaking.

I noticed the way Sophie stopped saying goodnight to me.

I noticed they all stopped touching me. No pats. No belly rubs. Not even the casual foot bump when walking past the couch.

It was like I’d turned invisible.

...Maybe I had.

I would go to the back door at night. Not because I thought it would open. Just to remember.

Then one day, Sophie left the back door open. Just a little. It was the kind of open that wasn’t an invitation, but it also wasn’t a no and something inside me just... snapped awake. It was almost violent, how fast I moved. My legs, stiff from routine, remembered running like it was religion. I bolted through that gap like the air outside had claws and was pulling me toward it.

I didn’t look back. Not once.

You don’t know how loud the world is until it’s gone silent inside your bones.

Out here, it was chaos. Good chaos. Chaos that meant something.

Birds shrieked like they’d never been caged. The air smelled like seventeen things at once, mud, worms, garbage, freedom. Every patch of grass held its own story. Every gust of wind was a sermon. My paws hit the sidewalk like I’d been trying to shake off sleep for years.

I ran until I no longer could. Until my breath came sharp and wet. Until the world stopped spinning.

I collapsed under a bench behind an elementary school. And that’s where I met a boy, Adam. He was thin and wore a hoodie with the sleeves pulled down over his hands even though it wasn’t cold out. He was picking at the corner of his backpack with his fingers, slow and anxious. There were tears on his face, but not fresh ones. More like old ones that had never dried. The kind that don’t fall anymore because they’ve settled in the skin beneath his eyes. You could tell he was carrying something, something that was big and invisible. In the way he held his shoulders like they were too heavy. In the way he stared at the ground, like he was waiting for it to open up and swallow him whole.

And I knew that look. Not because I’d seen it before, but because I’d felt it before.

The stillness. The strange ache of being surrounded by people but feeling like no one sees you. I’d stopped barking once. Stopped asking. Stopped standing by the door.

He had that same silence in him as I did. The kind that doesn’t make a sound but still fills a room.

He looked like someone who had forgotten what it felt like to be seen.

And maybe that’s why he saw me. He looked at me like I wasn’t real. I didn’t bark. I didn’t growl.

I just sat there.

We stared at each other for a long time. I think we both forgot what it meant to be seen.

He reached into his bag and pulled out a peanut butter sandwich that was wrapped in foil that made a crinkle that you could feel in your spine. He ripped off a piece. With a shaky hand, he held it out. "Please don't bite me," he said softly.

I didn't.

He came back the next day. And the next one. And the next.

He didn't try to make me do any weird things like sit, roll, or do tricks. At first, he didn't even say my name. Just "hey, bud." But each time, his voice got quieter. Not so much a command, but more like a whisper.

He began to speak to me as if I were a person. I didn't understand all the words, but I got what they meant. You know? The kind of honesty that people only show when they think no one will remember it. He said one day, "My dad moved out." "Not a big deal. He didn't like us very much.”

I put my head on his knee. He flinched but then let me stay there.

In the end, he called me Shadow. He said it was because I followed him around like one. But I really think he was the one who was hiding. I stood next to him for long enough that he didn't feel so alone in his own skin.

We had a routine. He’d sneak away after school, sometimes skipping class, and we’d meet behind the building. We’d walk the creek behind the soccer field. He’d toss pebbles. I’d chase lizards I had no intention of catching. We didn’t say much. But we didn’t need to.

He’d whistle sometimes, low and broken. And sometimes I’d howl back, just because I could.

Then came the night he didn’t show up. I waited. And waited. It got cold and wet outside, and the stars came out. Everything smelled like goodbye. I thought about going. Going for a walk in a new place. Starting all over again.

But I stayed. Just in case...

He showed up the next day with a bruise under his eye. Didn't say anything. He just fell to the ground next to me, as if gravity had finally noticed him.

We were quiet for a long time. Then he said, almost in a whisper, "If I go... would you come?"

I licked his hand. He smiled. And it was the saddest smile I’ve ever seen. We didn’t run away that night.

We planned. Or... he planned. I just stayed close.

He packed some food, a flashlight, and a phone that only had half of its battery left. Took a sleeping bag from the garage. We left one morning, even before the sun came up. We walked down a road that didn't have a name. It was just a number. It stretched longer than I thought the world could even be. He talked about places we could go. "A farm. Maybe one of those hippie towns with goats and bookshops. Or Canada."

I had no idea what Canada was. But I liked how he said it. Hopeful and happy.

We finally found an empty shed behind a shop that sold used tires. The roof was broken. The floor was dusty. It smelled like mildew, oil, and old secrets. But it belonged to us. He put out the sleeping bag. I curled up next to it. For dinner, we had crackers and warm soda.

The best meal I've ever had!

Days passed. Then weeks. He got a job at a diner washing dishes. I stayed in the back and ate leftovers from the cook, who had kind eyes but swore like a sailor.

We would lie on the shed's roof at night and look up at the stars. It had never seemed so big. So many stars. He would sometimes point out shapes. Dragons. Bears. Things he made up. He would sometimes fall asleep in the middle of a sentence, with his hand tangled in my fur. And I would just stay there. Looking at the sky for both of us.

Then came the day I couldn't get up on the roof. My legs just... stopped working. He tried to lift me up, but gently. I whined, and he stopped. That night, we sat on the floor instead. It was the first time in a long time that he cried. "I can't lose you," he said.

I wanted to tell him more than anything else, "You won't. I’'m already a part of you." But all I could do was push my head into his chest and hope he felt it.

I don't run anymore. But I still walk. Not fast. Careful. Proud. Every step is a little softer and heavier, like the ground is pulling me in. When I stand up too quickly, my hips hurt. Even though my eyes are cloudy, I can still see the light. I wear each ache like a badge.

I earned this body. I carried it through joy, through silence, through miles of grass and concrete and kitchen tile. I carried it through loss and laughter, through rainstorms and rainbows.

I loved this life. I don’t know how long I’ll be around. Dogs don’t live forever. But I think we live long enough.

Long enough to remind people how to come back to themselves.

Every mess. Every stick I never caught. Every peanut butter sandwich shared under a park bench. I loved it all.

I remembered the sky. Even when the door stayed shut. Even when they forgot how to open it. Even when my paws forgot how to run and only remembered how to tremble. I kept it close. In dreams. In breath. In the quiet, open way the world feels when you just stop and look up.

And I helped a boy who’d forgotten how to live... remember what it felt like.

I gave him my silence when his words hurt too much. I gave him my warmth when the world was cold and sharp. I gave him my loyalty, not because he earned it, but because he needed it. Because someone had to remind him he was still worth standing beside.

But even remembering doesn’t stop time. Even love doesn’t pause the clock.

I woke up one morning and the world felt... wrong. Heavy. Still. There was no movement in the air. My chest felt like it was full of rocks.

Adam was sitting next to me on the floor with his legs crossed and hunched over like he was trying to hold the whole room up with his spine. His hands were shaking and they were only an inch from my back, as if he was afraid that touching me would break me.

His eyes were wide and wet, as if they were trying to remember every part of me. He whispered, "I should have taken you to the vet last week." "I thought you'd get better like you always do." His voice broke when he said "always." As if he no longer believed in it.

I blinked. Once. Not fast. He put his face in my fur. "I thought we had more time." And at that moment, I swear, I could feel it hit him.

Not like a slap. Not like thunder.

But like snowfall. Quiet. Heavy. All at once.

The weight of every open door he hadn’t walked through soon enough. The walks we didn’t take. The sky we didn’t watch last week because he was too tired, too busy, too late. The sky he had remembered, but not fast enough to save me. And it wasn’t anger in his tears.

It was that other thing. That deep, aching thing people carry when they finally see what mattered all along... just as it slips through their fingers.

The kind of grief that feels like recognition. The kind of grief that feels like love, realized one second too late.

He stayed with me as my breathing slowed. He didn’t call anyone. He didn’t panic. He just held me like I was his whole world. Like maybe, for a little while, I had been.

He said my name, both of them. Waffles. Shadow.

He said thank you. Over and over. Like he was trying to go back in time and say it all the days he hadn’t.

I tried to tell him it was okay. That remembering matters, even if it’s late. That love still counts, even if it comes in the final hour.

It doesn’t have to last a lifetime to be real.

Sometimes, it only has to last long enough to change one.

And I think, maybe, that’s what I was here for.

I want him to know I was never waiting for forever. I was just waiting for this.

And then I closed my eyes...