Kendall Michelle Sigafoos
Poetry Editor
If I were an animal,
I would be a dog.
I’d be a mangy little beast,
skin sticking to my ribs,
with patchy spots of mangled fur,
teeth bared,
claws overgrown
and clacking on the ground beneath me.
I am by no means a prize-winning pooch,
rather,
a mutilated mutt.
I will not be brought home.
I bite, I bark, I beat, I belittle,
and beneath my broken bones and spoiled,
spiteful soul,
this is who I am.
This is who they made me.
This is who I have always been,
and always will be.
If I were a season,
I’d be January’s winter,
slushy and sad and just plain slop.
No one enjoys the dark,
icy depression
that cages in New Year’s Eve
and Valentine’s Day,
the sharp, bitter cold
that seeps in through your coat
and sits on your bones,
a frigid cancer.
There is no sun,
no harvest,
no more carols or christmas lights-
only cold,
only dark,
only bitter loneliness
and this is who I am.
This is who they made me.
This is who I have always been,
and always will be.
If I were a feeling,
an understanding,
a pressure behind your eyes and in your chest,
I would be desperate isolation,
the moment your loved ones close the door behind them
and you realize just how lonely you really are,
the tears that well up in your eyes
and fall onto your collarbones,
just above the harsh grip on your broken heart
that makes you clutch your chest and cry-
This is who I am.
This is who they made me.
This is who I have always been,
and always will be.
But I cannot possibly be
a dog,
a season,
a feeling,
an understanding,
a pressure,
all at the same time-
so why do I feel like all of these things
all of the time?
Why do they sit,
cramped in my ribcage,
pressing against my heart?
Why do they sit at the base of my skull,
poisoning my brain? My nervous system?
The desperation makes my gums bleed,
independence and distrust blisters on my heels
as I abandon yet another shaky relationship,
the cannibalistic cavity in my soul
eats away at my hope for companionship-
Abandoned little dog
on a frozen street in January,
a stubborn slushy mess
that will not yet accept others’ genuine care.
I do not know it yet,
but this will be my downfall.
The desolate demise of this poor, mangy mutt.