On the eve of Friday the 13th, I celebrated the virgin’s birthday.

As I sat there, she stared back with somber and mysterious eyes.

She stared intently, her painted eyes burned a numbing hole in my heart.

It was an ominous feeling.

I ought to be thinking about the problems the world faces on a daily basis;

child soldiers robbed of their innocence or the violence in mexico leaving blood splattered streets.

But instead, my thoughts dwell heaily on the passing of the only true friend I had.

I would change the day my dog,Vivi, was killed.

I can still remember that sunny day after the virgin's birthday,

everything crisp and unusually new.

God knew what was going to happen, so did the virgin.

Both graceful figures cringed and held each other’s hand in heaven.

They must have known about Vivi, about her charm and her large watchful eyes.

One second, she slept soundly on the foot of my bed,

the next she was sprawled out next to the mailbox.

Her once beautiful jaw now only an indistinguishable scrambled jelly.

My mother was repulsed by the old man attempting to touch her.

God bowed his graceful head in Heaven, the virgin of Guadalupe cried diamond tears.

Even for them, time stopped and the sorrow burrowed it's way into everyone's hearts like a bot-fly.

The last time I saw Vivi she was carefully cradled in a small box wrapped in her favorite blue towel, to be laid to rest from a slumber she disturbed to meet death, God and the Virgin.