I Meet Andy by Maya Ruben

I meet Andy, a mural-dog with a toothy smile,

On the outside brick wall of the bar downtown.

Dried drips of paint-slobber

Slide down from the corners of his jaws.

I meet Andy just before my sixteenth birthday

(And maybe if I’d met him later I would have smiled with my lips shut

Or smoothed down my curls,

But I met Andy when I let dirt crawl beneath my fingernails

And danced with my arms up, hips swaying, body vulnerable.

I hadn’t yet decided how

I wanted to move.)

Andy presses his paw into the palm of my hand.

I shift away, but he looks up

At me, pleading, with eyes like planets.

I let go.

He barks, don’t move!

(At seventeen I’ll teach myself to fight back

And at eighteen I’ll meet a dandelion between sidewalk cracks,

Overlooked. I would have rather not met Andy

At all, to be honest.)

Andy’s name hangs on a collar around his neck,

A reminder that he is who he always will be,

And one can lose the need to learn new tricks

When the mural paints you so safely in place.

I should get going.

But as I begin to pull away,

Suddenly,

He can bite.