The Dogs Were Good (Again)
As if they had a choice, chained to the backyard fence, whimpering in the freeze like the weaklings you said they’d be. I threw some dry ham bones and snouted one, remembering to laugh as you’d said to. None of them ever barked, which made me wonder what good they were even after the spray hose shot ice bullets and dirt nails across their fur. Last night, I took dinner by candlelight and ate my steak facing the window, holding up each forkful so the moonglow caught the juice dripping, precisely the way you said I should if they were ever dopes again. Not one of them pulled on the links, not even the mom of those two scrawny runts, which made me wonder—what good is it having a mother anyway?
Help
It helps if you have cocaine.
It helps if it’s an old story, but not one about the sad moon, or a drunk dad who does the same unspeakable things all inebriated fathers do.
It helps if it’s storming outside, hail ricocheting off the roof, same as that perpetual haunt pushing up beneath your skin, like a trapped beetle, needling you again to say something you can’t, and never do.
It helps if your therapist nods off while you’re sharing about the six-month period your parents became nudists, their saggy bits barely covered in pubic hair that resembled month’s old alfalfa sprouts.
It helps if you haven’t eaten since Tuesday.
It helps if your heart is shattered and you feel guilty that it isn’t your fault this time either.
It helps to sink into a frigid bath of pity and self-loathing, gasping Fuck quietly in a shaky voice no one will ever hear.
It helps to have a broken mirror nearby, one with the backing cardboard showing through, lightning-shaped shards glinting in the sink like so many sins.
It helps, too, if your soulmate dog died recently, twenty minutes after you rush her to the emergency vet, where you forget her collar and they call you five days later to say so.
It helps, too, if you’ve stopped seeing colors and it helps if you don’t put that razor to your wrist, because you have thighs after all, and there’s a thumbtack for that.
It helps, they say, if you have a pen or a keyboard handy, though no one’s ever going to understand anything you’ve written anyway, how could they? But it helps.
Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State and the author of six books, most recently, THINGS I CAN’T EVEN TELL MYSELF, out now from Ravenna Press. You can find more of his writing at https://lenkuntz.blogspot.com
