Weekly Watering Hole #7

I think I missed last week! Oopsies.

Come on down and drink my salty tears. No seriously, this poem made me a little bit weepy, and that doesn't happen often.

----

Loyal

William Matthews

They gave him an overdose
of anesthetic, and its fog
shut down his heart in seconds.
I tried to hold him, but he was
somewhere else. For so much love
one of the principals is missing,
it's no wonder we confuse love
with longing. Oh I was thick
with both. I wanted my dog
to live forever and while I was
working on impossibilities
I wanted to live forever, too.
I wanted company and to be alone.
I wanted to know how they trash
a stiff ninety-five-pound dog
and I paid them to do it
and not tell me. What else?
I wanted a letter of apology
delivered by decrepit hand,
by someone shattered for each time
I'd had to eat pure pain. I wanted
to weep, not "like a baby,"
in gulps and breath-stretching
howls, but steadily, like an adult,
according to the fiction
that there is work to be done,
and almost inconsolably.

Definitely didn't think this was going the dog-route, but that definitely brought the feels... dang.

There is so much I love about this poem and I can't put it into words. This is my favorite of the weekly ones you've posted, Jane!

It perfectly describes my own feelings when we had to put down our wonderful Golden Retriever two years ago.

So much anger, sadness, guilt, outrage, all balled up in one poem. Beautiful.

This does bring back so much memories...when my family
dog had to be put down because he had cancer :(...touchy..