In the time I was dating M, I sometimes thought I must be an okay person—since his dog liked me so much and seemed to trust me, didn't seem to be receiving messages from her purer animal instincts that I was actually very bad.

Other times I knew that of course, the dog's affection meant nothing. Naturally the dog liked me. Sometimes, at breakfast, I gave the dog pieces of cereal. On weekends, bacon.

The first time I stayed over, I sat with the dog on the bed while M was in the kitchen. I patted her ears, communicated to her with my eyes how uncertain I felt. These nerves. This near-happiness. I know you can keep a secret, I joked to the dog. Thanks for being discreet. She dropped her pink tongue neatly from her mouth, as if she found me funny.
 
At the time, I often experienced my okay person-ness coming into question. Like the day my roommate received bad news from home, and I, watching her take the phone call, seeing her become upset, imagined that for a few days I would have our place to myself.

My roommate had tears in her eyes, and I pictured myself making dinner with M. Kissing him in the kitchen, then on the couch.

Plus it was always so easy for me, so instinctive, to glare at strangers on subway platforms when they stood too close, or walked too slowly. Take it easy, a man in a pea coat said to me once, as the F train shuddered away. Don't worry about it, I said, and kept walking. I could imagine my mother saying this, too—same severity, same disdain. Which was another problem with me: why was I always prepared to blame my upbringing?

Whereas M was endlessly kind. It was one of the reasons I figured we were doomed.

In the swirl of a snowstorm, through a coffee-shop window, I once watched him take the dog, who was not a small dog, up into his arms while I ordered for us inside. This way she would not have to stand in the sidewalk salt, which irritated the soft pads of her feet. She had been wincing. He lifted her into the air, belly-up, through falling snow.

He used to say to me, She loves you, because the dog would run to me, desperate, when I came in the door.

Or else, catching sight of me when I crossed the park to meet them, she'd bark and strain against the leash with longing. This was the summer before things ended between us: I'd kneel in the grass, and M would let her go. He'd be stuffing the leash in his pocket with one hand, and he'd reach with the other to kiss me. The dog barking with all her happiness.

Once when I was a child, I asked my mother to explain some things about dying. She imagined it was peaceful, she told me.

Honestly, I hated her for that.

As for the future, it was difficult for me to be explicit. I could always... That's the closest I ever came to saying what I meant. But I didn't ever say it to M, I only it wrote in my notebook. Then later I wrote a poem about writing it in my notebook, and then for months I wrote and rewrote my poem, so that in time, I could always became this emotional shorthand. It was so entirely familiar to me, in my mind, I would forget he knew nothing about it.

Nothing at all.

In this recurring dream I've had since then, M's dog can hug like humans do. Her limbs can bend in ways I can't explain. She barks, and then her barks turn hoarser.

One day I remember us rearranging books in his apartment. Taking them from shelves, reordering them in new places. Stacking them on the floor. A hot day, late afternoon, we were laughing. When M brought me a glass of water, I kissed his face. Light warmed the room in lengthening slants, and the dog rested her head on a pile of novels.

That night, falling asleep, M put his face to my hair. I touched my nose into the crook of his neck. The dog spread herself, unhesitant, across us both in the dark. The strings of her ribcage were warm on my legs. The city lighting shapes across our blanketed limbs.



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Kate Doyle has had work in No Tokens, Meridian, Anomaly and others. She received an MFA from New York University, where she was the first Provost's Global Research Fellow in Creative Writing at NYU Paris.

Read her postcard.

Detail of mural on main page by Mariana Motoko.

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