Student Publishing Program ::

Colleen Hughes

Velvet

He came last summer,
though we were still at school.
I was at the movies, my sister
and mother at the mall,
when the call came.

This time, it was the other hip and,
thankfully, this time it was June,
not a frigid New England winter.
Even though they were
the same stairs.

So in a way, we were
lucky, though the ensuing days
were ones filled with stress,
the kind that suffocates you,
and doesn’t go away.

With nowhere else to go,
he came here. To call him portly
would be an understatement. He
was, in fact, a lumbering sausage.

He smelled like dust, and mold,
and cramped-up heat. They surrounded
him like the stress surrounded us.
It took two scrubbings
before he smelled remotely clean.

Though it wasn’t his fault
that she could no longer take care of him.
But there was one who would
care for him during this summer.

The trick leg was a problem. He
had trouble walking, and resorted
to stilting around on three legs.

One September morning,
in a fit of anger and frustration,
he was tossed like a javelin
out the back door, and was cured.

Romping around freely, he had
no knowledge of the plotting my
mother was doing, and that we
were all in agreement of, save for
the little girl, his only friend.

A month later, on a Wednesday,
he was sent away, to live with an old woman.
No one really minded all that much,
We had Rosie now, a real dog.

But his friend, the little girl,
innocently shopping on that
summer night, was devastated.
To this day, she still cries
for him, hoping we’ll get him back.

But we won’t.
He’s gone.

[TABLE OF CONTENTS, LHS CLASS OF 2012 EDITION]