Intention Tremor

Intention Tremor

My dog’s neurology is unraveling.

He pushes his forehead to the precise place

my tibia juts almost through the skin,

where it feels like a shard,

and rests against that sharpness

as if wondering, what the fuck,

his brand new tremor rendering

everything unfamiliar

except my shin

where he returns,

again and again.

My life has skittered away from me, too,

like a ball of yarn, painstakingly shaped

from the raw skein, now sent spinning

across the world’s slanting-away surface.

The dog whines, and I touch his head.

He can’t negotiate

his water bowl anymore,

the clear liquid

in its usual container

flummoxes him,

just as I can’t navigate to a life of before

and keep falling face-flat against after.

It’s just after after after for the dog and me

as some higher power bats at us like a cat,

claws unsheathed, helpless

in the presence of what creeps, unable to help

but take part in an unwinding.

As the dog cannot help but collapse

after he trembles, and I cannot help but pray,

bumping my skull against an edge

that feels broken.

As my girl cannot help but morph, like the dog,

something growing or withering in his head,

an illness spreading its dark wings in hers,

nothing we can see, no, but a presence

leering, indelible.

Like God.