Act 1 Scene 4 (The Letter)

The dog’s fur is smooth and white and gives way to a pink underbelly that is pelted in spots. I am ambitious when I arrive home, but soon find myself overcome by malaise. The air is full of gnats and the scent of the swamp betrays me. If homeliness is godliness then my domicile is dead, but the plants dotting the fence line still bloom with life. They seclude me, and enrapture my momentum in their chutes.

There is a sculpture of a mongrel tyrant staring defiantly from amidst boughs of Ligustrum and Ginger vines, and I shudder as his eyes scour the yard for misbehavior. He is dressed in stone. I am clothed in earth, and revel in the mud on my knees and the bugs that encircle my head. The alabaster bitch slams into my shoulder and sends me spilling to the turf on all fours. She grins, and the tartar on her brilliant fangs gleams. “Let’s dally in these blades, let’s rumble in these clods, let’s muss up our hair and blacken our paws,” she cries.

I am not amused at her attack upon my sullen meditation. I lash out and box her ears violently but she thinks I’m just being friendly, so I grasp at her again and grab hold of a stray paw. I yank her towards me and pull her to the ground where I hold her motionless by pressing upon her polka dotted stomach with my palm. She quiets, and I appreciate her seriousness before joining her belly up on the ground. We sink into the soil like cadavers, and I realize how seamless reality appears from one inch high.

Today in the mailbox, I was officially declared ineligible from anything too intellectually rigorous, and my lungs burnt for thirteen seconds before I cooled them off in a pond. Now, I’m complacent again, and it feels refreshing not to be the object of institutional scrutiny, and I empathize with the plight of the mongrel for he is a victim of observation of the most horrific kind. He has been sentenced to spend all eternity inert and subject to examination from all of those who pass, and although he will never be allowed to sing or dance or draw crude pictures with crayons, he will be judged by every pedagogue who crosses him and decides to comment callously on his inability to lament.

His armor and his sword are only cruel facades, and I am lucky to be wearing denim that tears and a smelly V-neck undershirt that speaks volumes about my potential in the realm of collarbones, and feels much better at the moment then a future in sophistry or a drive in a fancy car.