As I slowly grow up and bloom with time
Slowly unravelling the gifts that time offers me at every step
Brain swelling everyday with new knowledge
And contemplating choice versions of myself,
It jabs at my heart to think of myself as a hopeless romantic
A picture I quickly scroll past in my mind.
When I spare the imagination a minute,
I see myself as a grown puppy living on an island,
Left to fend for itself in a place where territories are fenced,
And seeing no source of livelihood, spends this time
Standing on a path that ushers into a small butchery
With walls painted in white, clothed in tantalizing pictures of meals,
Red meat dangling on hooks, behind the front glass.
A hungry desperate dog that has had nothing for days,
Nothing but inexplicable hope written all over its red dancing tongue
And fancies it can go out of its way, go invisible, snatch money
Anything to heal the pain of helplessly watching the meat
From afar, like watching it from a beautiful sinking boat,
In whose stomach paddles and paddlers lie and add weight.
In that short moment in which I sit on my hint legs
Tail wagging against the ground softly
A whirlwind of heat circling round my belly,
Mind racing inside a raised head,
And my wet slippery tongue exposed and glinting in the sun,
Between sharp poised ears and wide eyes trained
I realize that behind ‘my love’ is a hand with a knife
And on those bloodied hands rests my fate
Hands that serve a throng of frequent customers
And won’t sell all to one human buyer
Worse still, when I am the underdog
A dog at the tail of the queue,
A lone desperate dog.