“This time the human is the one who dies” by Cali Kopczick

There’s a dog here whose love language is Quality Time.

*

There’s a dog slamming its paws so hard against the door next to yours it rattles the frame, whining and yelping and scrabbling against the wood.

*

Unfamiliar in the next room, you can be no comfort.

*

How do you tell a dog that its owner will be back? How can you know yourself?

*

There’s a dog here whose love language is Words of Affirmation. You say Good Dog and
suddenly you have a glowing topiary.

*

You say We’ll be home soon and he picks up the pace.

*

You say Mom and Dad will be home soon and nothing happens.

*

Owner or onerous? Dad or mom or mumbling?

*

There’s a dog here whose love language is Food.

*

There’s a dog here whose love language is Touch, so much so that she body-checks you with
every hug, that she weaves into your legs like a cat while you put on your boots, so much so that
she’d sit on your chest while you slept if you let her, just to be closer to the core of your warmth.

*

There’s a dog here who just came back from a thirty-minute meander, during which it peed three times and pooped not a once.

*

There’s a dog here who has trouble getting up the stairs. High rises, short body, little grip. He cannot follow you.

*

When you help the dog up the stairs the first time, you take it under its forelegs like a baby you’re none too taken with.

*

When you help the dog up the stairs the second time, you curl your arm under its back and it writhes against you.

*

When you help the dog up the stairs the third time, you curl your arm under its belly and it pees against your forearm.

*

When you help the dog up the stairs a fourth time, just a little boost under the forelegs as it takes the rise itself, it plops a little turd on every tread after it.

*

The feel of warm dog shit through a thin plastic bag is almost pornographic.

*

Not that dogs know what pornography is. This is why, when they climb on us, we let them step on our crotches and our breasts. Like children they might never have to learn differently.

*

There’s a boy in a beige button-down and beige slacks watching a terrier shit itself in a bright green plot of grass by the beach.

*

And some people find pit bulls threatening.

*

There is a dog coming towards us treating its leash like a window. It leans out, ecstatic.

*

Does its ecstasy lean in different directions depending on its breed?

*

Sad dog in the wind.

*

There is a dog here whose love language is Licking. Even through your clothes, this one will lick for you. He wants to taste you and everywhere you’ve been.

*

Dogs always pause to sniff the shrubs outside the local real estate office. This is a statement about staking claims on places.

*

There are no dogs allowed in this apartment.

*

There are no dogs allowed in this apartment.

*

There are no dogs allowed in this apartment.

*

There are no dogs allowed in this apartment.

*

There are no dogs allowed in this apartment.

*

There are no dogs allowed in this apartment.

*

There are no dogs allowed in this apartment.

*

There are no dogs allowed in this housing complex.

*

How do you tell a dog its owner is not coming back?

*

There are no dogs allowed in this upstate farm.

*

Death, for dogs, is a staircase with high treads and little grip. They cannot follow you.

*

Dogs, for you, are an aspiration. Like a newspaper subscription. You like to think that someday you will be the type of person with the time and money to sustain that type of habit. Who will have an armchair and the square footage to recline it on a Sunday morning with your other luxuries.

*

There are no dogs allowed in this neighborhood, by culture if not by law.

*

There’s a dog here wearing a small suit on its front legs, one with fake arms hanging out the sides so if you squat down and let yourself be beguiled it looks just like a little property manager.

*

There’s a dog here to see you.

*

There’s a dog here whose love language is Leashes. You do not know this, but when it is asleep and churning its legs it is running through a hanging forest of leashes.

*

A dog’s favorite part of the leash is where the rope loops back on itself and is sewn. This is a statement about iteration.

*

Three hours later, the dog in the next room is still whining. The doorframe is still rattling. Even the sound of you rolling over to listen to it is an outrage.

*

Finally, you open the door on a night that is not yours. The dog careens out to find no one familiar, to not find you at all. You give it a treat and you help it up the stairs and in the morning you find a pile of shit and vomit and you clean it up but still for the dog you are not there.

*

There’s a dog here who will not accept its name. Only the voices calling it.

*

To earn the right to care for another living creature, to have it recognize that, know your scent as more than just a block of traces, you have to layer your calls, stay long enough that the echoes overlap and their name on your voice sits in the house comfortable like a big pillow.

*

Is echo ownership? If you say it clearly at first but the waves collapse on each other, is it still a mumble?

*

There’s a dog here whose love language is Furniture. You must keep it off the couch. If it counts you as something ignorable that it can sit on, count yourself lucky. When you leave, it will not know its way around the room.

*

For a dog, your language is love. Warm shit in a bag or on the stairs can be love.

*

You will never leave, so you are never coming back.

---

Image: “Creep” by Evan Delgado