I have killed many before you

breakfasts, I do my work best in the morning,

though you rise first

-my banishment, my bane,

burnished red tipped by white

like the mountains of Crete.

A paintbrush dipped,

we dot the cosmos

/ this abysmal rabbit hole.

I am sure death is no worse.

The creature only wakes without its kits.

Do you fear your finish?

Mutilated into a crown of laurel for a mutt;

a tree for some next victim to scamper up

in vain

I grow

closer

like Icarus before his fall

and I can see each hair of your coat, a bronze wire at melting point.

I pretend your tail is my own,

that I am just a pup chasing in naivety.

I am that-

unable to own my deficiency,

and there is no divinity for me either,

not in the stars.

My star,

all I know is the end of you

but for some reason, I cannot cause one.

Our destinies duel quietly.

Tug-of-war with fate’s string.

Fetch,

you say,

as you fling yourself galactic.

I am only a dog, after all.

Rayna Moxley is a College first-year hoping to pursue Creative Writing. In addition to reading and drawing, she loves writing poetry about mythology and the passage of time. “Laelaps” was written from the perspective of Laelaps, or Canis Major, from the Ancient Greek myth of Laelaps and the Teumessian fox.