dog days

the first dream sent me like a tourist into an old, small, smelly pet shop with chirping birds and seed shells in every corner. There was lots of fish food and pellets stacked on shelves in no particular order and a counter to my right, dusty and faded with stickers covering all surfaces. Magazine and posters lined the counter tops and walls; numbers permanently marked in free spaces. A dog in a cage stared me down, the only dog in the store. I walked past him but he followed me. Everywhere aisle I turned down, I felt his glare. “Giving Away For Free” shouted the sign limply hanging from the bars on the door of that cage. I finally walked up to him, the dog, and kneeled down. He sat and bowed his head, acknowledging a recognition only him and I could understand. “Who are you? Why me? How do you know me,” I questioned within my chest? I couldn’t shake that feeling of being in an orphanage, with that one life, eyes glued to mine, infection from crying sleepless nights, howling and pleading for my rescue. “I must take this dog,” I spontaneously mouthed in no sort of control or direction. I had no where to keep him, no food or bed; no stability or a yard for him to run around in, to catch a Frisbee. And besides, he stood about 4 feet tall, his head nearly meeting my underarm! His hair was choppy, course and shaggy, gray and faded. He had clumps of whitish bristles above his sad eyes, a long, straight snout with a big ol’ black and round wet nose, and I heard him whisper, “You know me.” I knew him, alright. He was put on this earth, in that old, small, smelly pet shop just for me, though I had no idea how I would take care of him. All I knew was that he was coming with me. I opened the door to the cage and he crept out, afraid of everyone in that store but me. His shoulders slumped and he kept his head to the ground, walking as if he’d been punished his whole life. He didn’t greet me, only walked to my side and sat down. I grabbed the first leash I saw, pinned it to his collar, and sighed. “Come on, boy,” I said and walked out into some kind of blinding light.

a few nights later, the second dream sent me like a straight shot into the intersection off of the interstate. Dusk had fallen but I could still see without headlights. Cars were backed up along the side of a road and people were standing, still, staring at a lifeless lump of white fur, lying in front of a maroon SUV. The driver, an older lady, stood beside her demolished front end, so shocked but not crying. I walked over to the body, and gently knelt down by its back side. The dog raised its head and looked me straight in the eye. She had such kind eyes, full of tears, snout stained. Whimpering yet numb with pain, I saw her back end was shattered. The people asked, “Is this your dog?” I slightly said, “No,” unsure of why I was kneeling beside it in the first place. “But this must be your dog, she recognizes you,” the reckless driver said. I again pleaded that it was not my dog, but with more whimpering I knew what I had to do. I closed my eyes and placed my hands inches above the broken legs and lower back. I began whispering in prayer, and the dog lay silently, unmoving. I prayed for what seemed hours but was only a few minutes and suddenly the dog stumbled to its feet, still in shock of what happened. She shook her head back and forth, dusting off her fur. I, as well, stood and the people glared at me, mouths drooping in awe. I patted my side, sighed, and said, “Come on, girl.” She limped, dragging her legs across the highway. I picked her up and sat her in my passenger seat. We rode off. Time passed in darkness, only a half of a second in my conscious. Driving down the exit of the local Mall, I turned to see her smiling, tongue dropping from her mouth. “Lilith,” I said towards the dusk, colored sky. She turned to me, full attention. The same recognition ignited an emotion in me I’ve never felt before. “Lilly,” I called her. I came to a stop at the red light and patted her head, and she grinned. She had the face of a cocker spaniel, but a poodle-like body. Her hair was white and curly, soft and silken. Her legs were still mostly immobile but she didn’t care as she sat in my seat, relieved to finally be home. I didn’t know where home was. I didn’t have a yard for her to run around in, barking to catch the ball again. I didn’t have a bed or food for her. I had only my car and some kind of love for this dog I never planned on feeling. I just knew she was coming with me, and we drove back into that very same blinding light.

Snippets

She had started speaking in languages unknown to her, rattling off vowels of thick angular words that were foreign to her mouth. She spat out strange sentences of the unknown into her silent, vacuumed vehicle, driving down the dark street, going to the local market to pick up fruits she’d never tasted. She spat out strange sentences lying on her back in the dark waiting for sleep. Maya had come close to losing her mind without him. She didn’t know him, and wouldn’t for a very long time. All she knew was that something strange was happening to her and she would tell no one about it, even in her deepest loneliness. She would stoop in her room for days, not calling work. Her friends and family worried but not to any extreme circumstance. Maya’s casual disappearance was to be expected throughout each month. They let her go without thought or reproach, knowing she’d eventually pick up the phone and call them, acting as if it had only been a few days since last they had spoken. One month passed. Maya never called. Two months passed. Still, she didn’t call. She sat in her room, speaking tongues of another world for hours on end, sweat pouring down the sides of her emaciated face. She refused any solid food, sucking only on mangos, peaches she’d stolen from the pantry. Soaking in cold bath water every few hours, she slept within her dreams of causality, digging for translation.

Snippets

What is with all of this infidelity, she asked herself. Printed and read. She looked at the word again, studying it as if it were a fragment of glass, appearing on a wooden floor out of no where, nothing broken. A shard. A memory. It starts at such a young age- the search of unknown agents, scents, tastes, experimenting with burning chemicals on skin. She ripped each letter apart and played scrabble under the moonlight.

I N F I D E L I T Y

T I L E

F I N E

L I E

L I E
LIE

She took the three letters and pasted them onto the window, crumbling the other seven letters into a broken wad and dropping them at her bedside. Lie. She focused on the picture framed beside the window. Lie. They looked so happy. Cameras lie. The moonlight beams created shadows around the torn three letters suctioned to the glass. That glue was going to be a bitch to get off of the window tomorrow. She didn’t care. Unbroken. She fondled the bit of mystery glass, the word, around inside of her palm, her mouth, feeling its smooth edges glide against her skin. Where did it come from, infidelity? It had happened so quickly: Marriages in ruins, purity stained. Material items split up or thrown in boxes behind abandoned buildings. Sweaters, shirts, socks burned. Delete. Delete. Delete. She couldn’t find the fucking key anywhere. She took the sharpie and branded that word, delete, on her arms, on her legs, on her breasts, her face. Maybe she’d had too much Sauvignon, the last bottle from the wedding, given to her by her Uncle Maiyor. Delete. She watched the ink smear into the fine lines of her body, distorting the word itself, seemingly running like the magnum of hope she’d had for him, for them. She hadn’t felt them, but the tears started pouring from her eyes, down the crevices of her face, makeup running, spotting her chest. She wiped them away and fell onto the cold tiles, lying broken, crumpled like the 7 letters by her bedside.

Snippets

Don’t’ know what it is. Fate pulls from a million different directions for the same reason. Expect a response. Some kind of response. Act as if you know my very response. Ignore all. Ignore all. Again. Get to the release of building and owning freedom so that you may understand at that exact moment you are in need of no one. Douse the other part of time where you write to the same hopeful soul of love, understanding, realization of will; impact; a point graphically sketched into life. Don’t let any of them go. No matter how deep the connection. Talk. Connect. Complicate the very matter of life. Know you can. Know how to do it. And whoever proves to stay, no matter the distance, will prove the One- the one searched for in sheer existence. Be the one dreamed of, no matter the face or place or feeling. Replace all that I know. It is a race. Who will win? It’s never been a question as if I were a prize.

Snippets

She had planned on going to the store. She had planned on getting cat food and various cans of beans to mix with the brown rice she started buying to eat for dinner every night. She had planned on showering the white gunk her body had accumulated over the hot day walking from building to building. But instead, she finished a book. Instead, she painted a picture to give her mother for Christmas. Instead, she opened up her laptop, sitting it on top of her childhood teddy bear where she began writing. Her fingers pulsated across the keys without hesitation, unsure of the words which would unfold, unsure of the story she would tell, but she wrote. She kept her eyes from drifting together, knowing she’d wake at 6 am, worries racing through her head of the person she had dreamed of moments ago. Those dreams haunted her. They were real dreams- dreams of pain and torture; the kind of dreams that would happen soon.

The sky flashed with lightning but she typed on as the vents outside hummed like a syncopated bass line. Her phone beeped, notifying that her sister had called saying she’d be laying down at 10. It was 9:54. She kept writing. It wasn’t loneliness this time that beckoned her to the glow of the screen, to keep her company until sleep befell her. It wasn’t the urgency of finding some kind of answer wound around her subconscious that called her to begin the release that would soon flood document after document, file after file and folder after folder until she’d bind them in large stacks, working ruthlessly under a lamp to piece together the remnants of two years of plans broken, relationships ceased. What was it that brought her here, night after dark night, telling truths that were only truths to her and stories to a stranger? Was it all for the mourning of that morning, the morning where she lost herself and found herself? Was it a memory or some pre-specified destiny that summoned this fire within her?

Snippets

From a closed window, she watched a heart break in silence. She watched him crying, his shoulders trembling, head bent to the railing, scrolling through pictures and endless amounts of texts. The ice cream truck melody rang through the neighbor hood, “Do your ears hang low, do they wobble to and fro? Can you tie them in a knot, can you tie them in a bow?” But, she heard nothing and saw everything. She saw it coming as the two paired themselves off like inmates in a shower, desperate and ruthless without care. She saw the desire stained loosely from their wrinkled clothes, heard them in the next room whispering, giggling. With some kind of peripheral vision, she saw them disappear throughout the night but no one dared to ask where the two of them went, what they were doing. There were nights he’d lie on the couch, staring blankly into a television screen with one movie on repeat. He could barely spit out question or response, barely make it to the bathroom, barely make it up the plush carpet stairs to his bedside, drunk from a different type of shining moon. Conversations of her husband tapered off eventually, pictures replaced by more crayola or elmer glue art from the three kids she sent off once a month to grandparents.

She’d seen this type of thing in the multiple desk spaces at work. She’d watched them pair up, take walks, disappear for hours around lunch time. She observed the unkemptness of it all, them stumbling through secured doors, flailed hair and limbs, secret smiles, warm cheeks. She caught the sparks in all their eyes, lies. She believed in no such thing as commitment, pawning it off as a temporary dream, a false hope, an emaciated figure as if self-sacrifice was the only relief. She saw empires crumble in a moment, wasted years in a week’s worth of deceit.

He smoked his cigarette limply, analytically searching for a reason, an explanation, a way into her again. Flints of ash lingered in his hair, disheveled, like his shoes at the doorway. She’d dusted the mud from them while he was watching the same movie in the theatre downtown, reaching his hand deeper into the greasy popcorn bag, consoling the emptiness in his chest. Wine lingered downwards, across her tongue, deeper into her esophagus, down deeper into her lungs. She breathed heavy with a distilled sense of drumming in her legs. Too long. Again, too long. She hadn’t moved for hours. Ashed incense tainted the dressed windowsill as she sat watching; eyes glaring into something much deeper than she’d ever want to understand. She’d heard nothing. Enough to last her this lifetime. Silences stockpiled into memories.