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Dog Divination

I was with you on the shore that day, when we watched the palm lines of the trees behind us read our paths into obscurity. I told you: yes, I can pray for a future, but I just don’t know if I can believe. I just don’t think it’ll ever happen, I just don’t think I’m worthy. She scribbles that part out with dark ink. I just don’t think it’ll ever happen, I think that these timelines, these frail embodied what-ifs that have infected us beyond salvation, are too dark for anyone to see through. You step in and there’s no light, no stars littered amongst the skies, a nothingness—space as a swallowed void, the end of it all, the universe’s final breath. You step into another timeline like you’re playing some kind of game with the fabric, like there is something that you want, something that you’re going to get no matter what, even if you have to carve inwards for it. Even if you have to vomit up the guts and stuff the plush back in to keep it all in place, all quiet, entirely resilient. The point, of course: I have no future. You don’t need divination to figure that out. The question is: what are we going to do about it? What is there to do? You claw and claw and claw and claw and claw and claw and claw and claw to be let out of the cage, to be released from your inferior body into the greater world, the world where you can walk and you can talk and they all like you again. You’re just breaking your nails off, and those wounds don’t heal pretty. I’m the prized animal, the most popular exhibit at the place, they’d hate to lose me. They feed me microwaved pizza crust and they pat the top of my head and they show me off to their neighbors: look how extraordinarily grotesque this beast is! But no one can truly be convinced, so they stick their hands in. Silly them. Silly me. Who am I to talk about futures? I’m too many someones to talk about futures, too many potentials souping around in the body’s soul. Well, fine. If you won’t say it, I will—I was with you in the bedroom that day, when we watched the car drive out of the driveway and into the gray loveless distance. They’d hate to lose me and they’re going to pay me double just to sit and stay and sit and stay. The treat’s coming—they point and they throw, look, over there! But there’s still nothing. Silly me.