behold
my stepbrother’s pet
for less than six months:
Leo, the Leopard Gecko.
For a week he wandered,
sluggish,
not chasing crickets
with reptilian reckless abandon
as he once did,
hiding away in his tree trunk
which had grown too small
or was just poorly crafted to begin with
until we dragged him out
and saw some dried thing
sticking out of his scaly anus.
at first we thought it was a fecal strand
or some digested piece of hair
which we tugged at and pulled
to no avail
until I, annoyed by the lizard’s inability
to register discomfort
as it lay there, seemingly drowsy
but actually dying
when I discovered that Leo
had a gut impaction
because pet stores don’t care enough
about lizards
to tell you that sand in a terrarrium
damages their insides when swallowed
because of clumping
and that you should use dirt, wood chips, moss,
basically anything
but sand
which leaves us with Leo and his intestines
sheiveled and sandy
sticking out his scaly anus.
my stepbrother was not there,
so the new question was
how to solve the gecko problem
without him finding out?
the answer was to distract him
by buying a ball python.
meanwhile, I was sent out back
with my stepbrother’s most recent pet
who had crawled into his water dish
as if to soak his dried-out intestine
though could absorb nothing any longer.
whose fault was it
that this gecko could suffer so?
I couldn’t tell you.
I also couldn’t tell you
why it took me ten minutes to prepare –
propping Leo’s head over the dish’s edge
petting him until his eyes closed
talking softly and soothingly
washing him with a bath’s last rites –
before I placed a paper towel over him
and broke his skull with a brick
expertly aimed to kill instantly
like a guillotine designed to crush
rather than sever.
he squirmed three times
and was still,
that little lizard corpse
who once possessed the moniker “lion”
yet was felled by a buildup
of gastronomic thorns
that sent him to my executioner’s block.
as I hurled him over the fence
and into the creek
I realized I was compelled by pity
rather than by whim
to end this creature’s short existence
unlike the gecko that flew
from my third-story window;
to kill the one that knew no more than a tank
seemed of more value
or, at least, of more consequence
than stopping the gecko that dared
to climb impressive heights
Morning's Early Dark 