The Shadow with a Pulse

It’s a three-legged terrier with a matted coat

clicking along the concrete six feet back.

I turned and hissed at it by the bodega

but it just sat and waited in a crack.

I don’t have anything to give it.

No scraps, no kindness, no home.

But it tracks the sound of my grocery bag

like a needle following a chrome.

Two paces behind my heels,

the rhythm of its limp is a clock.

I’m being haunted by a hunger

that follows me for every single block.