My very own personal puppy is the size of a teacup. She will stay that size forever. I hold her in one hand and hold her purse in the other and everyone is so jealous of me. I keep telling them back off. I keep telling them don’t touch. I keep telling them some day the puppy will be full grown and she will come and kill them. But the puppy will never be fully grown. My very own personal puppy is the size of a teacup and she will never be full grown. When I go to bed at night, the puppy curls up on a pillow above my pillow. She watches over me and the apartment because the puppy never sleeps. Sometimes I wonder if the puppy still gets tired or maybe even wants to sleep, but can’t, and so is stuck in this endless state of being that is like rolling that rock up that hill. Then I stop wondering about her and I go back to sleep. She gets cold because she’s so tiny, so I took up knitting little scarves for her. She doesn’t like sweaters but she will do a scarf. It drapes over her body hamburger style and she lets the bottoms drag as she walks from room to room. When I put her on a leash and she pulls in one direction and I pull in the other, she levitates. She lifts off the ground from the tension of the leash and for a second, you can see so much air beneath her. In those times, the scarf no longer drags on the floor. They both float. I try to imagine what it would be like to be her and have the world so big, but I can’t do it. I try to imagine what her food tastes like when she crunches down with her tiny tiny teeth and what kind of flavors she’s experiencing if they aren’t the ones I’m having, but I can’t do it. I can’t imagine the world so big, or those flavors I’ve never tasted; I have always had a hard time getting outside of myself. Before she tucks me in at night, I look into the puppy’s eyes and try to imagine her happy, but I can’t do that either.
Rebecca Grace Cyr’s writing has appeared on Maudlin House and Muumuu House. She has a substack (urban germ) and a twitter (@madamepsycho_)
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