Nothing grows there anymore, or I could blame the dog

©Cameron Altaras

I felt a life constricted

In the pages of a diary

Jammed between two books still-to-be-read

The ideas gone as dry as the ink.

I smelled the words exhaled

Over an all-too-familiar lump in a throat

Parched and parsed into minutely rehashed and analyzed

Bits of being human.

I tasted pauses between paragraphs of

Bitter regret longing for something

To connect to

Make a coherent whole.

I heard the yearning in ellipses

Not quite completing one thought

Dissolving into a life that ought to

Stumble onward sentence by sentence and

Mean something.

I saw the past pulled forward

Too many times the same sun

Burned patches worn thin

Retread too often.

Nothing grows there anymore.

I could blame the dog.

I could point out how he’s worn the area barren.

I could show you how every day he keeps returning

Along the same path

Every time I throw the ball in

Another direction

He always returns

Along the same path.

We’ve planted grass

But his feet keep tromping on

The same spots.

Nothing grows there anymore.

He returns to his vomit, too.

What he ate this morning or

Last week covered in white mold decomposing

Yet the dog returns to it.

We’ve got plenty of food for him, kibble and

Beef bones, fresh from the butcher

Yet he returns to regurgitated

Bits of his last meal and he

Always runs back

Along the same path.

Nothing grows there anymore.

I could blame the dog, yet I stumble over ruts

My feet have trudged through what

I’ve pulled forward

Too many times

Along the same path

My heavy boots delayed by

That same-over-the-shoulder-glance

Revisiting another possible path to here.

But nothing grows there anymore.