My Father’s Dog

This is how weird life is

Photo by Grant Durr on Unsplash

I’m not a poet and my usual attempts in that direction end up as chopped pieces of prose meat. Yet I thought this story was worth telling. Thank you for the prompt, Keeley Schroder!

It wasn’t my own dog.

It was my father’s dog and because

I was a teenager with

long hair

and hormonal brain fog,

I didn’t like anything that my father was, or owned.

So, in those

first hours of Ruggie’s life in our flat

I saw him, an enormous white beast cowering at the bottom

of the hallway,

and just

like that

I didn’t like him.

My father had brought him, not I. That day

I told my father, “I didn’t want that dog.

You take care of him. It was your whim.’

The dog didn’t pay much attention to me. His eyes grew dim

whenever I approached and

he’d turn his head away as if

I wasn’t worthy of his attention and I surely wasn’t.

The spoiled