When a dog dies,
yours does too, all over again,
because all dogs are a shared memory.
When a dog dies,
every other dog must live longer
to make up for it.
When a dog dies,
you wish you had learned to howl
when you had the chance.
To a Departed Pekingese
Mihaela Mihailova is an animation studies scholar, researcher, and educator at San Francisco State University. Her edited volume, Coraline: A Closer Look at Studio LAIKA’s Stop-Motion Witchcraft (Bloomsbury, 2021), won The Norman McLaren/Evelyn Lambart Award for Best Edited Collection in Animation. She is the co-editor of Animation Studies, an open-access online peer reviewed journal dedicated to the history, theory, and aesthetics of animated media.