Signatures

A trained dolphin once painted brushstrokes on a sweater for my mother. Less exoticly, we have mud applied with love from our bassets. And when the paw print is clear, we call it a signature. It’s a point of pride to have a well-loved basset’s pawprint on your jeans. But when I was about six, I was wearing Sarah’s yellow shirt when I got a prominent signature right on my chest. It never washed out, and Sarah held it against me. A decade later she hit me in the stomach with a wild grape. It stained. We call it even.