The Internet Support Group: r/petloss

Littered across the void are laments for dead pets

and a reddit thread unravels

in photo after photo after photo

of a ‘gone-too-soon’, a ‘my girl’, and an unnamed foster kitten

And while one user is ‘subconsciously looking for my dead cat’

someone else wonders, ‘am I being too sensitive?’

another is matter-of-fact, ‘this is my first death, I’m 17.’

but all this grief doesn’t just congeal on reddit and Twitter

it appears IRL in sudden tears, on sunny afternoons

or as guttural wails in office toilets, muffled by well-timed flushing.

And these online elegies and offline breakdowns

only make sense when ‘u/hufflepuff1267’

asks the obvious,

“you get five days off, hot food from neighbours

and condolence texts when humans die

but Sundari has passed away

and I just have to cope?”