Just a Moment

By Bonnie A Ross

He approached us with his words loaded, ready to fire.

“Libtards,” he spat. “You people are ruining this country with your wokeness.”

The crowd on the corner kept waving their signs, kept ignoring his rage until it burned itself out and he fell silent, standing next to me with nothing left but the heat of his own anger.

I stood there with leash and sign in hand, watching the traffic, and without even expecting an answer, said to the air between us:

“Do you like dogs?”

The confusion on his face was exactly what I was hoping for— that moment when someone who’s been throwing words like stones suddenly doesn’t know what war we’re fighting.

Liam, my protest companion, looked up at the man— this dark, sweet mutt enjoying a warm summer afternoon the way all dogs love to be part of it. The man looked back, and they made eye contact.

“Do you have a dog?” I asked.

“I’ve had a few,” he said, not meeting my eyes, and in those four words I heard everything he wasn’t saying—the love that lived there, the loss that lived there, the part of him that knew what it meant to share a mutual appreciation.

“My dad always called dogs angels on Earth,” I said.

The conversation ended there. He walked away.

But for just a moment, a dog had made us both more human to each other.

—for those who seek human moments