Not cured of being human yet she murmurs, lying face up by feet. She is feeling unholy and doormat-like, back from therapy.
Even old dog has to do his own thing––His own look, own smell, on walks, places to pee. A white woman asked if he is a Chihuahua! He’s half Mini Australian Shepherd, actually, I said. Oh, must be a bit of Beagle, Chihuahua, or Corgi, other strangers interjected knowledgeably.
You will never be pleased, he says quietly. His hair is dark.
They annoy me when they talk like they know him.
You can’t control people.
Therapy puts me in a box and tells me to poke at myself in there, she sniffles, breathing smaller through her nose. The box has mirrors–and pink ribbons–and no doors, so I see myself seeing myself from above, and I feel girly and trapped…
She looks at him not look at her. They are inland of beachy San Diego. Outside, lawn of poky fake grass.
You know, babe. We could have been cousins, since we have the same race. That’s a weird thing.
We are nothing alike.
A podcast said let’s mix until we are no longer racing. Funny. (You have less than me, you’re not real, he said before, once. My language, he said, after they first laid together, drunk. She’d kept quiet. What is culture without its language? What is the color of mixed skin? The shape of mixed eyes?)
That was mean, what you said when we first had sex.
About your breasts? They are good, you know. Good breasts.
No, about me not being Filipino.
Thick silence.
Plus, you came and I didn’t.
I tried. You were hard to crack.
Dog shuffles. Wags tail. Eyes her expectantly.
Out? Out? Go out? She says this four times, trying to read dog’s face. She rolls over, lifts herself, opens a beige door with a screen.
Old dog clambers out, walks in a sort of semicircle, sniffing. He pees one long pee, sniffs again, and completes the circle ending at the door. He does so as a pure actor, not someone looking at himself doing. She nods and nods again. Good boy, she says.