once-promising future

he left
a hooked bird in our garden
i peeled potatoes, and you dug a grave
a few bleeding cats by the shed
i chopped tomatoes, you wrung the necks
a boston terrier on the windowsill
i can’t remember what we were making, even

he purred for us
ate with us
our little fighter

and he must have been—
skinny like that,
deferential like that.

on the fifth week,
(the morning we named him)
a neighbour woman
brought her puppy’s body to our front door and said:

do something.

we ran our fingers through the matted fur
holding her wounds against our memory.

we were silent for a long time, before we said

—and forgive us for this—

he’s always been so good to us.

Sophie Furlong Tighe is a Dublin based poet. She has work published or forthcoming in DUST Magazine, Kissing Dynamite, and Boston Accent Litamong others. She tweets @furtiso.