My Dead Dog

My yellow, dying dog
is rolling on the old rug
in the center of my kitchen.

I need to kill her quickly
or I will have to see her leave slowly
and leave most of me behind.

Only a bit of dog remains
trapped in the wet, milky eyes
and the grey, scraping limp.

She gargles a final bark,
as her pain peaks and crashes over us both,
and pulls me under the guilt
of dropping a life into my own.

 

Bob Davis is an actuarial mathematics major at Bryant University. He is from Ramsey, New Jersey, and this is his second published poem not featured on his mom’s refrigerator.