How I arrived at the Kennel is a mystery.

Perhaps like a lush arrives at the bottle’s end,

I was looking for something.

Biscuit, I would name her,

for her toasty almost white fur.

One precocious lab stared me down hard,

Watching me as deliberate as a prison gaurd

but with longing, chocolatey warm eyes.

She couldn’t t know my childhood pooch died in my arms?

if she were a song playing endlessly I would hear “I want you to want me”

like a record skipping, her eyes asking if she could be the one

to make me trust love again.

I preferred the fictitious lives,

whose pages comforted me always,

The ones that lined my dusty shelves,

Encounters, if too stirring, I could abruptly set down

My friends, Daphne, Saul, Edith and D.H. would never leave me

Cause even when they died, I could see them again,

If I so chose.