Arthritis paralyzed her hips,
atrophied muscles that once jumped and ran for the ball,
collapsed beneath her.
She lay in the kitchen,
breath heavy and painful,
unable to get up.
So she sat in her own *****,
panting,
a low moan with each exhale,
inaudible to human ears.
She was giving up on life,
slowly bleeding on the inside,
pain she couldn’t tell us about.


The first shot was given
into the scruff of her neck,
viscous pink fluid that made
her eyes grow heavy
and her jaw slack.
And then
gently, automatically,
she reared her head back.

“There she goes.”

Unresponsive,
only breath and a heartbeat.
The second shot,
small but lethal yellow into her ankle.

“Her heart has stopped beating.”

We covered her in a white sheet.
Her body was still.
Hallucinations of the breath beneath it.
We carried her stiffening frame
to where she once incessantly dug as a puppy,
her own grave.
The harsh bumps of her spine brushed my leg
a rigid outline like knuckles on a closed fist.
In her white hammock
we swung her softly into the ground.
She settled 5 feet deep
where she would take her final nap.

And now,
The unconscious tapping of a foot,
her tail wagging.
Dropping a scrap on the ground,
I go to call her name.
Where are you to say good morning, good night?