She doesn’t get a birthday party.
\nNo one’s sure of the year, much less the day.
\nWhat she gets are regular meals,
\ntreats, heart worm meds,
\nbelly rubs, and an occasional bath.<\/p>\n
A year and a half in, she’s still nervous
\nat dinner time, sits at my feet as I measure kibble,
\nbreak an egg, spoon out canned meat.<\/p>\n
Nike’s been here long enough not to worry.
\nShe’s never missed a meal. Big sister knows
\nthere are two bowls of food, enough
\nfor them both. Maybe someday,
\nSally will quit worrying, too.<\/p>\n
She seems to know we won’t hurt her,
\neven when we drag her to the vet.
\nShe doesn’t like shots, but they’re over fast,
\nnot like the pain of a bullet wound, two of them,
\ncourtesy her former owner,<\/p>\n
wounds that have healed on the outside,
\nbut still cause her to limp.
\nSally’s past stays with her, but her present
\nis pleasant. She can go out and come back in,
\neven when she’s been in the creek.<\/p>\n
She has her own bed. She belongs.
\nWe love her.
\nShe loves us back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
She doesn’t get a birthday party. No one’s sure of the year, much less the day. What she gets are regular meals, treats, heart worm meds, belly rubs, and an occasional bath. A year and a half in, she’s still nervous at dinner time, sits…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":665,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem","category-official-marathon-prompts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/665"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111044"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111377,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111044\/revisions\/111377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}