Dog Star
All day and night, back and forth between the stinking 6' by 6' space, filled of my own filth, and the 6' by 6' space of open air, bordered by the high mesh fence, less stinking, also filled of my own filth. I watch and scream at passers-by. I shout for someone to see. They see, but they go on.
I must be some sort of spectacle. I know I am a nuisance, at least to those who keep me here. I must be. I shout with all that I have. I hear the reverberations off the neighboring walls. I cough up blood. I know I am a spectacle.
At first I knew I was loved. I was well fed and more importantly, I was played with. There were toys. I jumped and fetched and kissed. I was patted, hugged. It was a dream.
I don't know when I woke from that dream, and I suppose there's a part of me that hopes I still am dreaming. I outgrew the home and somehow displeased my keepers. I grew a little curious and got into things I probably shouldn't have. I always apologized, but they were too angry to recognize it. I smelled good things and couldn't help myself. I don't know when my nature became ugly to them, but it did just that.
I was hit more and told that I was bad. I was left unfed for days at a time. The warmth of the home, that simple pleasure that I had taken for granted, was too good for me. I was sent to this place. I was fed something meager and sour. I was forgotten.
Some of the passers-by, they communicate to me with their eyes. Some show compassion, or at least that's how I see it. Some of them see me as a nuisance, for sure. Some of them I disgust. But some, they see my place, how small and filthy it is. They want to do something for me, I'm sure of it.
Sometimes, when the rain falls, I don't go back inside. I stay out, in the mud, letting the ground absorb me. I wonder where this rain comes from. I wonder how the rain starts. Where is its source, and could I go there someday? I stare up at the rain.
I think I know something about the rain. Sometimes the rain comes from my eyes. What eyes could be so large as to fill the world as it did when it rained? I knew not.
I think the sadness that I sense when the world is gray and the rain falls...I think that sadness is for me. I wonder and wish for salvation from my filthy space. When the rain stops, and the sun comes back out, I think that is for me too. The warmth that dries the tears. It does not change my plight, but I feel encouraged, nevertheless.
Sometimes other keepers come by, walking others of my kind, my brethren. I used to simply wave, but things changed. I was thinking too deeply, too far beyond my 6' by 12' bounds. I wasn't worthy of my thoughts, and I knew that, but they took over. I started hurling them at anyone who could hear.
My shrill incantations sounded an alarm through the houses. I thought I heard similar responses, but the far off calls were merely echoes. What I proclaimed was merely this: 'I am trapped! WE are trapped! Run if you can! SAVE yourselves! The keepers are not to be trusted! Look at me! LOOK at me!'
I must have seemed a lunatic, and I had evidence of this in the eyes that looked on me. I've already described the eyes. It was the first time I'd really looked at them, those first moments I'd started shouting. Eyes can roll, they can loll, they can shoot daggers. Eyes can weep like mine, they can look up and wish for things. Eyes can narrow, focus, or dart about. I tried to stare at the eyes of every passer-by, to see if they would look my way, to see if they would help, or if my brethren would heed my advice, attack their keeper, and flee. Compassion, occasionally, but mostly disgust. None of these eyes I ever saw weep.
It must just be me, then. I never saw another like me. But then, what could I see, trapped here in this filthy place? I should be content that I have a place. I should be content that I am fed, that I have a roof, if I so choose. Regardless of its unkempt, stinking, filthy... regardless. The ideas are all I have now. The wild imaginings of a mind too unworthy of its lofty thoughts. All I have.
It has begun to rain. I lay on the ground, waiting. Maybe I will sink down all the way to the bottom. I'd like to sink down, for a change. Today I will try. I press myself, face first into the mud. I press my chest to the ground, an attempt at increasing the weight of my wretched body.
It begins to pour. Maybe the eyes above want to grant me my final wish. To sink into the ground, through my own filth, to another life. I stop my strange writhings for a moment to look up, to express gratitude for these heavy tears that will bear me on to a more wonderful life. I think I see the eyes, the source, for a moment.
Pressing further in, my face, my chest. My breathing slows, and I claw further. Pools develop around me, and I can feel myself deeper in than I've ever been before. Soon I will cross over and all my ideas, all my imaginings, will be at hand.
I press further. And further. And am no more. No more tears. No more pitiful, or scornful, eyes burning me. Just the cooling, soothing ones from above.
I squeeze, one last time, the mud that bears me forward, between my soft, pink fingertips.
