1. The Field

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The dream field is prettier than the real field where my dog was stabbed. 

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It’s 1970, and we aren’t alive. The field is full of insects. The sun looks like a gallbladder. You reach into your picnic basket for a plastic box of cherry tomatoes, but the plastic box is filled with a hunk of me the size of a grown man’s palm. It’s for admiring, not eating, but you spread it over crackers. Maybe it’s my liver. 

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I don’t deserve to be here. 

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By the time I lived, my spiritual organs had already been eaten by people who didn’t know what they were eating. I had iron and mass and stuff inside me, but nothing clear and bold. I’ll always belong to the past because that’s where I was digested.

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In the field, a man with a knife wanted to get his point across. I was holding a dog that was, in that world, mine. Instead of blood, my dog bled meat. In the car on the way to the vet’s office, I asked my mother if my dog was dying. “Yes,” she said. And I thought that was so cruel at the time.

 

2. The House  

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My grandmother’s house was bought by a writer who was on the phone with someone who kept asking him for money. This was a business problem. I took the phone and explained how old the house was, and the problem went away. 

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It was time for dinner. My grandmother wasn’t there, but her leftovers were in old containers. Roast beef congealed in fat. What part of the beef was that? English peas and salted tomatoes. Can I trouble you for some mashed potatoes?

 

3. The Cemetery

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All my friends were there, and I went to visit them. Even after my body, I was getting around. I had absorbed so much, my liver didn’t matter. I had acquired someone else’s without even trying, without even chewing. It came to me in my sleep. Some kind of present.