They Changed My Name

To see from another's view.

They took me away, away from everything I've ever known. 

Away from my home, my family. 

Everything changed. 

I had nothing left from where I came from; they even changed my name. 

I didn't understand, but I dared.

I dared to hope. 

I hoped that maybe I could get used to it. 

Maybe, I could understand these people, accept this place as my home. 

I did what they said, obeyed, kept quiet. 

I desperately tried to follow their untold rules, but I still made mistakes. 

The old voices would scold me, and the young voices hit me. 

No mercy, no second chances. 

Eventually I learned, not out of respect for them but because of the need to survive. 

I perfected my routine, carefully staying out of everyone's way and following every rule. 

I disappeared into the mundane. 

But they didn't mind my disappearance, and I didn't mind them not-minding, as long as they left me food. 

I lived like that for what seemed forever. 

As if looking through a filter of black and white, I watched the young voices become old and the old voices become ancient. 

When the young-now-old voices would visit, I greeted them, and they called me old too. 

I guess I was old. 

I grew even older and was tired. 

I was tired of the mundane, the black and white, this place. 

 I tried to escape once. 

There had been a loose board in the fence, and I took my chance as soon as I saw it. 

I ran with all my might. 

The wind was in my face and the ground was racing away under my feet. 

My first and last taste of beautiful freedom. 

Then they had found me. 

They brought me back 'home' and the voices hit and scolded me more than usual, and I longed for freedom even more. 

But I never felt it again. 

The fence was repaired and they locked me up at night. 

Now here I was, old and tired, in body and soul. 

I could have kept going, kept surviving, but laying there in the damp grass, I decided to let go. 

They found my lifeless body later that day. 

There was no funeral. 

Not even an unmarked grave. 

They put my body in a sack and dropped it off at the dump. 

I didn't need to buried, they reasoned. 

After all I was just a dog.

Author's Note

Please review! I don't know how I feel about this!