Written in Batumi, June 2022. Typed up today.
The dog had sand between its pads when it fell in step beside me.
Batumi’s promenade runs along the water for what felt like the whole length of the city. I walked it most evenings that June. The room I’d rented held the heat and the sea was right there.
The dog showed up around my third evening there. It was brown. Medium-sized. A green collar on its neck. Not a pet and not quite a stray. It matched my pace and kept close.
We’d walk south. The dog never pulled ahead. When I slowed, it slowed. When I sat on a low wall to watch the ships, it sat beside the wall and looked the same direction. A man selling roasted corn from a cart waved at the dog once. The dog kept walking.
I wrote about the seafront at night and somehow left the dog out of it.
Every evening, at the same lamp post, the dog stopped. A concrete post with a pale bulb, one of a row along the railing. I’d keep walking. It would turn and go back.
I tested it twice. Walked past the post without slowing. Kept going. The dog sat at the base both times. Waited. Then went back alone.
I never worked out why that post.
I think I forgot to photograph it.
More soon. Or not — we’ll see.
