Your college dog is dead.
That T-shirt you got as a gift
from the girl who just thought of you
as a friend
(yeah, that one)
has got a hole in the front
from when you poked it too hard
during spring cleaning.

Your favorite snack food of yesteryear
has been rebranded
gone bankrupt
and is now, unsatisfyingly, back
aiming itself at a nostalgia market
that wants to relive glory days,
rejoice in a past gone golden,
hazy,
limited to soundbites and snapshots
of better times.

They may have been better.
They may not – it doesn’t matter
either way.
They were then
and now they’re gone
and either way
you won’t ever be able
to walk those hills again with Buster
because your college dog is dead.