The Dog in the suburb

The better the suburb, the smaller the dog,
a damn parade of toy poodles and chihuahuas
with names like Muffin or Duke,
tugging on leashes of soft leather,
like some kind of joke I can't laugh at.

You see these big men,
slick and polished like the hoods of their cars,
walking these little puffballs,
and you wonder—
is this the new way of showing off?
Not the biggest lawn anymore,
but the smallest dog that fits in the crook of your arm.

But down in the rough parts of town,
where the sidewalks are cracked,
and the houses lean into each other
like old men at a bar,
you get big men with big dogs,
real dogs—
muscle and teeth,
the kind that knows what it’s like
to fight for a scrap of something real.

These men don’t need to prove a thing,
their dogs are as honest as they are,
no pretense, no show, just muscle and bone,
walking the same broken streets,
knowing they’ve got each other’s backs.

It’s all a game,
this life we build around us,
and a dog is just another way to say
who you are—
or who you wish you were.
The third child, the silent witness
to all our desperate signals.

And maybe, just maybe,
somewhere between the big and the small,
there’s a truth we’re all too afraid to look at
too long.

So we buy our dogs,
we walk them on our chosen paths,
and let them speak for us
because we’re too damn scared
to say it ourselves.