It's late. I'm just back from a day of endings.

The final picnic at my MFA program was tonight. I'm sure back at PLU right now, people are still wandering around the campus and dorms or playing pool in the basement of the house we spend much of our time. Many will be packing up and leaving in the morning, a few, like myself left tonight.

I had a strange ending to this residency. My graduate reading was on Saturday night and Sunday was my class graduation. But on Saturday, I learned my cat's (Emily, named after the poet 14 years ago) health was getting worse. Right before I left for college she was diagnosed with a tumor in her mouth. The doctor had said she thought maybe 3-4 months. She had no idea how fast it would progress and how it did. By Sunday, she wasn't eating. On Monday night, I had hitched a ride with another poet from around my area to come home early to spend time with her.

This morning I woke up to find my daughter's leopard frog was dead and I also knew (I knew it last night) that today would be the day I'd have to put Emily to sleep as she could no longer eat or drink.

It would seem it was coincidence that the leopard frog and Emily died on the same day, but last year in January, we woke up and my daughter's betta fish was dead-the same day we were putting our greyhound to sleep.

We've tried to figure out, why two pets leave on the same day. Is it energy? Are they like the women at dinner who leave for the restroom in pairs? Is the frog/fish, the "disposable pets" a sort of escort for the larger pets? It's bizarre and beyond coincidential. A sort of canary in the coalmine for the grim reaper in the pet world. I'm not sure.

What I do know is I've done a lot of crying and again, another day has felt like a week. Today seems to be the day of endings-- one wonderful cat, one funky leopard frog, and I have officially shut the door on my MFA program. I can only hope that tomorrow offers me a new beginning.

It sort of feels as if we're in that place where the novel is shut and we're left wondering what's next.

More soon. And especially more about living in a scripted world...