Decisions

My dog stands
at the top of the stairs,
unsure.
Does he stay up here or leave
for the floor below? He
doesn’t know,
won’t budge,
so many reasons
for why he should stay,
just as many
for why he should go.

How many people
are like him?
Fork in the road,
no way to choose
either way
a loss,
either way
missing something?
How many people are
afraid to make the wrong choice,
equally afraid to make the right one?

He settles down
two stairs from the top,
neither up nor down,
lying there,
not very comfortable,
still knowing he’ll have to choose.
Upstairs or down?

How many people
wish they could be both,
two things at once,
leaving neither behind, taking the
best of both worlds?
How many people
wish decisions
didn’t exist,
wish it wasn’t so hard
to choose?

Finally, my dog
gets up and trots down the carpet that
runs down the staircase like a
waterfall
back to the bottom floor.
He’s made his decision,
and, being a dog,
forgets about the indecisiveness
there once was, but
most people, they don’t forget,
always haunted
by the shadow
of the other choice,
a whisper in the back of their mind that
they can’t let go,
always lingering, never gone.