Day 24: Imagine you could communicate with one animal species. Which species would you choose and what would you ask them?

A Conversation with a Dog

The dog gives me that questioning look, a tilt of the head, and she says,

Youre so quiet what are you quiet about

She asks questions without punctuation. Without an inflection of curiosity. Without grammar. Without folds when speaking. That’s a human thing, she once told me, fenced-in words, defined, refined. Sublime sounds bursting out of a human’s head. You should learn to bark, she said.

And I tell the dog that I don’t know what I’m quiet about. Do I need a reason? I suppose that I do, so I start searching for an answer. The dog is still looking at me, head tilted, so I glance beyond her face to the wall, and to the clock on the mantelpiece, and to the…