Sweet Pea by James Keith Smith

Let’s bury him there, in the mulch, I say. Where the ground is soft.

In my roses? my wife asks.

The roots of the maple in our yard burrow and twist beneath the foundation of our home, raise the concrete on the sidewalk out front. My shoulder aches. I press the heel of my hiking boot onto the step of the shovel, shift my weight, and the earth crumbles.

Whatever I say is going to be wrong, misinterpreted. 

Yesterday we fought over lentil soup. And now this. Our Burying-the-Cat Fight. 

Of course, nothing is about lentils, or Sweet Pea.

My wife places flowers in the box. Rose petals, dandelions, Queen Anne’s Lace. She plays a Morrisey mix—Sweet Pea’s favorite, she insists. 

All of this feels over the top for a no-frills stray I found trapped in my cellar, long before we ever met. And I can’t help but shake the sense that she loves Sweet Pea more in death than she loved him in life. She’s been waiting for this.

Whenever I’m ready to leave her, there is some grand gesture, like this, Sweet Pea’s funeral. And though I feel a strain in my neck, the sun beating down on my back, I manage to dig the hole, and cover poor Sweet Pea with dirt, and my wife is behind me now, watering the roses. 

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JAMES KEITH SMITH — James’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Split Lip Magazine, Moon City Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Pithead Chapel, and others. He was born in Michigan and lives in Tacoma, WA with his wife and two young children.

Art by JULIA BREITKREUTZ — Julia is a writer, artist, and a middle school English teacher based in South Carolina. Her work has appeared in Flash Frog, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, Five on the Fifth, and elsewhere. When she is not writing or teaching, she can be found playing Gloria in the web series “Mush TV.” Check out her Substack @apalelight for more of her writing.