Rita

My little blonde dog
has been behind the good times
for years,
a scrappy, scroungy thing.
Rita, we called her,
after Bob Marley's wife.

Mom brought her home
in a McDonald's bag,
said,
"Look what they were giving out with the nuggets today."
Best friends!

God damn -
everyone's dog is made of love;
she was no different,
but she's always looked
like a little old lady
in the eyes,
so loving, yes, and self-important,
and so certain.
So funny and strange.
Brussels griffons
have that odd, endearing way -
a precious little nub to wag
and a beard wet from the water bowl
that will always find a way to touch your skin
and startle you -
paws that remind you
to keep petting
once you've stopped -
y'know, in case you forgot -
and paws that knock
with just a scratch or two at a time
to be let in in the morning,
just to be near you.

and now that she is
a scraggly old lady
in the body, too,

those eyes carry everything
in her old soul
from the puppy days,

and she tucks them into bliss
when she sunbathes,

shines their bright oblivious joy
into the face
of deafness,
wild itching skin,
and arthritis pains.

Rita.
We got her in '06,
just before the hurricane
of the same name
that put trees in my childhood bedroom.

We've held her through the toughest and the best,
the warmest, the laziest days -
through winters, close to the fireplace.

Once,
this month,
in the morning,
before we started her on arthritis shots,
she was making sounds
like a squeaky, pleading door,
and I just about fell out of bed
to go hold her on the floor,
get her to stop trying to stand
for a minute.

Her broken sounds calmed down,
turned to whimpers,
and I felt the suffering
ripple through
her little blond body,
too tough of a wave.
I dropped a few tears in her fur,
for that first sight
of the beginning of the end.

She's alright for now,
the meds are working, thank god.
But I can feel her ghost
scratching on the door,
and I want to,
but it's so damn hard to ignore.

Little deaf, wonderful, old lady;
Rita, sweet baby -
she can still hear
just a little bit,

so sometimes
when I have her alone
I say, right into her skull,
in the words she owns:
"Daffa good girl."

I'm sure
she knows.