Recite their names
when the doctor says to
count backwards from ten
and anaesthesia dreams you into
the world of animals put to sleep.
Listen for the scratch-click
of nails on linoleum as they gather here
on the far side of sodium thiopental,
cats, hamsters, parrots,
all the dogs you said were
irreplaceable come to lick your fingers with
tongues like warm blood.
Recite their names.
They know you
forget, move on
but they are above jealousy
and below it. The cats slink to rest
on stainless steel trays.
The dogs sigh down to the tiles,
soft chins pressed to paw-tops,
eyes turned up like questions.
Try to remember their birthdays,
the nights they were sick, the drug
that put them to sleep,
the same injection rubbing you
drowsy now
under the knife.
Recite their names,
remember how the sound of something
can mean itself to life
like a dog called in from another room.
Lean into the bright moment
when you first saw
and loved them in spite of
yourself, knowing that
human years are a coefficient
for measuring barbiturates
into the bloodstream,
for calculating the rhythms
of faster hearts, smaller lungs,
shorter lives.
Recite, cradle each name
on your drug-thick tongue, and here
in the halo-world below the operating lamp,
be selfish, set your jaw
with these names behind it
as though you could traffic them
into the recovery room when the nurses come
to wheel you away,
as though you could walk out
of the underworld
smuggling the dead
in your mouth.