There was a dog named Lucy who used to meet us at the lake.

We didn’t know where she came from, just that she had a collar and somehow always found us. Every time we showed up, there she was—tail wagging, eyes locked on whatever we were holding. Especially if it looked like a rock.

At first, we tried to ignore her. She begged us to throw it, pawing at the dirt, barking softly, waiting. Eventually, just to get her to leave us alone, we tossed the rock far out into the lake.

That’s when she dove in.

Like, fully committed—splashed in, disappeared underwater, and then, to our amazement, came back with the rock in her mouth.

We were stunned. This wasn’t fetch. This was something else. She had learned to dive. And that turned into a game we played for years.

We’d throw a rock—sometimes far too deep, sometimes impossible—and she’d go after it. If she couldn’t find the one we threw, she’d bring back a different rock. Never empty-pawed. Never discouraged. Just thrilled to be playing.

Lucy, as we knew her, didn’t need instructions. She just needed the chance to jump in and come back with something.

I’m not sure what happened to her eventually. But that memory surfaced recently when someone told me they remembered a story I’d written about “being as happy as a hammer dog.” I don’t remember writing it.

But I’m grateful they remembered it, because even if this isn’t the exact story, it’s one that clearly needed to be dug out of me.

📜 Poem: "Omg"

Oh my god

Some billionaire probably owns
All our MySpace messages,
Like ghosts in a warehouse server farm
Burning energy for forgotten friendships.

We never saved a thing

oh, my, god

Just thought it’d always be there.
Your face in my Top 8,
Now it’s static in the air.

Photobucket’s gone,
Our faces turned to 403s.
Flickr said it’s pruning us,
Like we’re dead leaves on a feed.

What we called forever
Was a 12-digit cache key—oh my god.
Now I can’t even find
The way you used to speak to me.

We built lives on profile songs,
HTML hearts and broken moving frames,
Custom cursors and blinking tags,
Digital love in monospaced riffs.

But no one backed it up,
And no one said goodbye.
We just logged out one day
And watched the decades fly.

A cached goodbye,
An expired link,
Some CSS we wrote in pink.
That was love—oh my god
Or something like it.

Oh my god.

I have a lot of stories like this. So maybe it's time to start sharing them. Because otherwise these things are just going to fade away. Unless we make space for them.

If you remember anything I've written, please share it with me. I'm not sure what I'm doing with this blog, but I'm sure it's important to someone.