Please think about this

What's Not On The Label

My dreams of a life outside this cage

come blurred, mouth foaming and body numb.

It stiffens when they come and inject their needles.

I don't know what they're doing

or why they're doing it to me-

why I'm here, or if I'll ever leave.

They tell me "it's okay,"

that I'm a good boy,"

while softly petting me

and fill my veins with a poison that slowly

pulls me in and out of nightmares

sometimes more soothing than images in my conscious mind.

I don't want to be here

but I know nothing else.

I used to feel lonely

but now I can't feel anything,

my body so impaired that when my heart beats my limbs shake.

And later, a man sits cross-legged at his kitchen table drinking expensive tea with his beautiful wife. "After all that work, the damn medicine turned out not to even work. Had to toss the whole experiment into the garbage."

And while he sips, the beagle lies alone in his cage. His lungs collapsed, no longer allowing air into his body. No photo montage of a life-well lived flashes before his eyes, but as his eyes slowly close, he's comforted by his reoccurring dream of a small boy laughing and playing with him, his tail wagging happily each morning as he's lovingly hugged at the neck. 

The child lets go, and the beagle's eye-lids fall shut.