Member-only story

Lynda Wallis
4 min readSep 12, 2019

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Letting Leo Back Into My Heart

Leo surveying our new kingdom, author photo

Leo’s back.

I’ve learned Leo travels about ½ mile a day.

I’m also beginning to learn how to love more loosely.

Leo is drawn like a moth to a flame, like peanut butter to jelly, like a cat to irresistible catnip; he traveled to the same neighborhood three miles from my new/old home in Wisconsin and exactly four doors away from where he turned up the first time after crushing my heart and torturing my soul. I was shocked, thrilled and in all honesty, kinda mad at him for reappearing.

This time Leo was gone for six days.The first time Leo was gone we had just moved into our new/old house six weeks before; we had moved from another state. Leo wasn’t just missing the first time, he was crazy lost in a brand new place with no roadmap of how to get home to us.

When Leo left the second time, I made the decision to not search for him, to not post his disappearance on social media — which was how I got him back the first time. I would not/could not ask for help a second time. Leo had on a collar with his name and my phone number. If he was to be returned to me he would.

The second time Leo disappeared I was functioning and was not lost inside a black hole of grief and despair. Six days after he left the second time I got a phone call. The woman said her name was Linda then told me her address…

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Lynda Wallis
Lynda Wallis

Written by Lynda Wallis

Deeply rooted in the mid west, I write about little things — everything is a little thing-art, the creative process, the natural world, and love.

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