Записки в бутылке (Messages in a Bottle)

Yesterday I sat on the couch next to you because you were in a rare mood for cuddling. You turned your little head and looked at me with your big, blank, brown eyes. Same dark lashes. Same black mask, just shading white around your mouth. Same soft wrinkles. But your eyes. Flat and expressionless, and liquid and curved, and alive and endless.

If I stare deeply enough, I can see them. The tiny pyramids that are also on the back of the paper money. A camera lens watching me. The triangles are far back in your eyes, deep in the black pupils, shadowy like storm clouds. But they are there. I think it’s possible that is what reflects my flashlight when we go outside early in the morning.

Maybe not.

Yesterday I sat and stared into your eyes, beautiful girl, and the cameras were watching me back. Someone sitting in a room full of 90s office furniture, squeaky chair, framed certificates and ballpoint pens, heavy plastic monitor next to a landline, was staring at me. I could feel them, feel the weight of their intensity. What are they watching for? When you stare at me in order to make me give you a treat, what do they see?

I don’t care if you’re a spy. I love you.

I have given you salmon oil in your high quality kibble, boiled chicken and white rice, pumpkin puree, an assortment of healthy fruits and vegetables, washed your feet, wiped your face with coconut oil, loved every one of your rolls, kissed your soft head, dusted beige probiotic powders over your food, bought you a thousand dollars worth of toys to destroy, comforted you over every trimmed nail. I don’t care who you work for. I don’t care if you are real.

I don’t care if you are spying on me. You have brought 346 sticks into the house that I have had to take away before you chew them up and eat them. I have pulled threads of grass out of your butt when you panicked and ran, tucked up like a round ball. I pick up your shit.

Yesterday you turned your little head and you looked at me and you yawned, white teeth, pink tongue, the elegant ruga along the sides of your lips, the black spot across the ridges of your hard palate, the dark tube of your throat. You leaned in and I could feel your breath against my face. I leaned in. Your fur is soft, you smell like sunshine and sticks and dried mud. You have tiny brown hairs, the most perfect brown that has ever been.

Yesterday I thought about the other dogs, the ones who already lived and are sealed in caskets upstairs, always with me. Did they have spy cameras, robotic intelligences like you? Were they cameras? Did they each have their own bureaucrat, sitting in an uncomfortable chair and watching? Or are you special?

Am I the eyes looking back at me, looking up while looking down? Are you me? I wait impatiently, as you refill the blue bowl with clean water from the tap. But I prefer the hose outside and maybe I will tell you I need to go out just to drink that water. Press my nose to the door until you open it and then make an immediate right to the spigot. I wait impatiently by my yellow bowl, as you use the big spoon to measure out chicken, to mix in the powder, to add chicken broth. You set it down. I am excited. You set it down. I dance. You set it down. I am so hungry!

Yesterday I looked through the eyes and I saw a cascade of water, the smallest insects, the fallen sticks, the edges of the cut grass, the metal strip at the bottom of the door. But, of course, the equipment isn’t built to transmit the smells and tastes or even how it feels to be alive. I can see and I can hear, but that’s all. I lean back in my chair and it squeaks.

I lean down, smiling, “That’s all, mama. That’s all.” Straighten. “Go take a nap while I wash your bowl, sweet girl.” I turn back to the sink, the counter tops cool beneath bent fingers.

You know there are robotic dogs, now, that have simple AI, that can make a few decisions, that can rebalance themselves like animals that are kicked, that can trot and climb and accompany people. Is that who is in the pyramids, not an outside watcher, but an inside one? Who is inside you? When I touch the little remolino on your hip, you feel warm and real. When I look across the table and you pick up your head from your loose sprawl in the exact center of the kitchen floor, in the way of everyone and every cabinet door and the oven and the refrigerator.

Yesterday on the hammock you rolled over and covered my feet, but you were watching the squirrels and maybe you didn’t notice. I’m shredding your chicken and you are drooling on the floor. The mockingbirds are eating the chiltepins off that bush that sprang up in the yard, the one you chewed up last winter and I thought you had killed it but I didn’t care.

Yesterday the squirrels climbed the greased pole to get to the bird feeder. Their flicking tails made you angry. You told them. You ate a fly.

Pyramids are where queens lie, that’s where the treasure is. If it comes to it, if I have to entomb you in the dark box, think of me like a sacrifice, a portrait painted on the walls to accompany you.

Beautiful dog, beautiful girl, the most perfect brown dog ever, your beautiful eyes, your dark lashes, your soft face, the dark bars across your toes, your wrinkles, your beautiful rolls, perfect, perfect, perfect. Watch me like I watch you. Wonder about me like I wonder about you. The mystery of a person who is not human, who looks at me and wonders. I know your dark eyes are wondering. The little alien on four legs that is sitting on my couch as I type this. The little alien who dozes when Alexa plays Philip Glass, the person who plays with her sweet potatoes and her plushes, who is not allowed upstairs but sometimes goes there.

It’s stupid to talk about yesterday and tomorrow when we live in the infinite now. I sit on the couch next to you because you are in a mood for cuddling. You turn your little head and look at me with your big, blank, brown eyes, alive and endless. You turn your big head toward me and look with brown eyes, too.