You think you’re the savior, the one leaning down into the pit.

But the truth is simpler. More merciless.

You are the one in the pit. They are the rope.

Who Rescued Whom

It began with the Husky, a ghost from some other life, pulled from a vacant lot where he had been chained to the carcass of a refrigerator — a king in exile, guarding nothing but his own shadow. He came into my rooms like a storm that had forgotten its thunder, pacing the floorboards with the slow suspicion of one who has been promised safety before and found it to be a lie.

Then came the pair — Elizabeth and Henry — from the shelter in Brooklyn, that grand mausoleum of the unwanted. They were a matched set, two halves of the same wound. You could not take one without the other; to do so would be to break the only law they knew, the law of their bond.

Elizabeth, the shepherd, kept her eyes on all of us, counting heads, drawing invisible lines to hold the world together. Henry was all trembling edges and sudden starts, a creature whose heart beat too close to the surface. He feared cats until we brought one home — then he feared nothing, except perhaps the moment when she would leave his side.

They filled the rooms with their breathing, their clumsy joy, their long slow afternoons curled into sleep. They lived as only the saved can live — not as a gift taken for granted, but as a reprieve granted by some invisible court. And when they went — as all things go — they left their scent in the air, their shapes in the worn places on the floor, the ghost-weight of their bodies pressing down on memory.

I thought I had rescued them. That’s the trick. You think you are the savior, the one who bends down into the pit. But the truth is simpler and more merciless: you are the one in the pit, and they are the rope.