If the dog should explode at ground level, it is not the violent world but what has been since you bowed your head at your nephew’s funeral, his 23 years of life given to a country that will not remember who he was. If the dog should explode at ground level, the clouds in the sky will turn yellow and the war will continue with little notice, pieces of the dog flying through the air to warn you it is the other world and not this one. If the beast should hurl at eye level, be sure to duck because the last flying canine hit your father between the eyes and he never forgave you for not being there, the absent son of the warrior hiding behind his childhood home because there were no dogs there, only insects that hummed before something happened. If the dog should explode at ground level, it is not then but now, when it is safe to walk out of the trees without getting bitten by a four-footed truth that stalks silent men.