It is awkward for me and bewildering for him
as I hold him in my arms in the small bathroom,
balancing our weight on the shaky blue scale,
but this is the way to weigh a dog and easier
than training him to sit obediently on one spot
with his tongue out, waiting for the cookie.
With pencil and paper I subtract my weight
from our total to find out the remainder that is his,
and I start to wonder if there is an analogy here.
It could not have to do with my leaving you
though I never figured out what you amounted to
until I subtracted myself from our combination.
You held me in your arms more than I held you
through all those awkward and bewildering months
and now we are both lost in strange and distant neighborhoods.
The beginning of this poem uses an actual dog as the subject, but by the end of the poem, the dog is no longer the entire picture, it's actually something much more complex. Near the end, the speaker explains how he left someone and how that effected him as a person. The last line explains how the two have separated to two different paths. Throughout the entire poem, the tone is found to be uncomfortable, which is heavily aided by the lack of a rhyme scheme, which creates an awkward feeling while reading. By doing this, the author may have been trying to convey the way life goes on and how it isn't smooth but it's rather awkward and bumpy. I think the author believes that natural love has bumps in it and it can be awkward sometimes, and I think I agree.
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