This villainy has been generously sponsored by a gift from Thao Vu. Learn more about sponsoring our dastardly deeds.
Pattern Recognition
Thanks to keen recognition capabilities, autistic people are sometimes thought delusional. In the Greek myth, Apollo gave Cassandra the power of prophecy then added a punitive curse: no one would ever believe the warnings she blurted in hopes of protecting others. In some versions of the myth, the people blamed Cassandra for the tragedies from which she tried to keep them. Retelling the myth risks the delusional misnomer, but this is necessary. Masking is a tripwire to exhaustion. And who doesn’t get tired of being tired? “Masking”: ironically, a ‘survival strategy.’ Really, a trick to make us erase ourselves. Someone this century——a licensed mental contortionist——flipped the Cassandra story to a fabulist weapon by watering it down, remodeling it into a complaint against autists by the non-autistic people in their lives. It’s just another game of odds but people do love games.
Scribble
When you’re mostly arms and legs you get a lot done. But you never see it since you’re all arms and legs, no head. When you’re all arms and legs you’re a natural contortionist, a hit at the traveling circus. I have never liked the circus because I’m not a human and those are my own. Since I’m only arms and legs I’m unrecognizable——yes because no head but also because of the dust blur I make as I go. In a way I am like the coin-op bull, spinning on command of strangers who wager on the timing of my toss; I’m a test subject in that manner. My spin becomes eventually displeasing however because of all the knuckle bumpy movements. The test has failed. The only thing that matters now is
Meditations on the New
Pool
Mine would be maintained at 93 degrees.The surrounding yard would enjoy its singular fog. This pool would be securely fenced off to keep the most deserving alive. Outside the pool’s fence: the lawn, selected over trees. Beyond the fence, two trees still hanging on. And the dogs. Worthy, most fit of all. The house is fence-attached——neither in- nor outsider. Boundaries are cagey. How strange. One Latin word for pool is stagnum. Don’t worry. Another is lacus. Entering my fenced-in pool: mostly me and the middle of the night. Lacuna is also related. I’m not sure how I got here. But thanks to the fence, almost everyone I love is protected.
Move to a New Abnormal
Quiet in the oversized house. Only cold and I roll through. An hour before dawn is my dusk. Not insomnia——just a drained swimming pool still waiting, with a sign: No toes, please. These days it’s fully inflated ducks afloat at brim height or nothing. These days, complexity’s the buoyant brute. From behind once-shadeless windows someone peeks for lights soft-flicked on at the neighbor’s. Hey Fog, do you remember romance? That old crush. Fog, I miss the real you, expansive. Here instead is gale force, with sides of episodic ice and infrequent mist to sleep through. Here is all trees and a few rugged nests. Here the fledglings fall beak first before their chance to flee. Stay up all night with me? I won’t make it worth the trouble. But look, the dogs don’t mind.
Elegy for Rescue
Marginalia
I don’t know why I thought we could save them——the dogs of this world. For five years, barks filled the floors of airports. For ten years, the house swelled with sad eyes and eager eyes and faces gone gray under roof. When dogs’ brows furrow, they share the ruts of their lives. One pup learned to make his own refrigerator ice; one person made a crime scene from pup paperwork. Rescue is a chameleon. I don’t know why I photographed the walls the contractors had built as we pulled them down. I don’t know why I have at times been utterly naïve, but I know it’s why I thought my hand over heart declarations were shared chapter and marginalia. Survivable: The play yard drainpipes failing, the dug-up grounds left looking like graveyard plots by the contractors. But the mud and the mass sinking. But the disappointed dogs. But the woman bragging that she hits her dog with a belt. And that group of dogs adopted, lined up and photographed off leash, smiling big, standing on the edge of a cliff.
Start Your Own Dog Rescue
You’ll only need a few things. First: a love for keeping mobs of people happy. You thought it was the dogs? What didn’t work for me might work for you. Go ahead, lie close, comfort the hounds, but keep wealth in your pocket. Gold stars don’t hold their value. Provide your public their desires, provide and do not err. Or, choose the animals——the forgotten, the thrown over, the escaped, the uncertain & merciful. You’ll just want to first to be set for life. Even the charismatic need forever begging bowls; consent for “No” is high in dogs but low in humans. There is just this one little lifelong requisite: be a brave host to the hourglass, your silent partner. The lives of dogs do not last long, so shun dark afterthought, or else you’ll have to bury it over and over. To vet your chances for success, divide the numbers you’ll defend by the sum of grief you keep for your own lost loves.
CJ Sage‘s work has appeared in numerous publications including Barrow Street, Black Warrior Review, Boston Review, Clade Song, Conduit, Crazyhorse (now swamp pink), The Journal, The Literary Review, Literary Veganism, North American Review, Orion, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, Terrain, and The Threepenny Review. Books include Open House and The San Simeon Zebras. The television series Revenge is one of her favorite revenge stories.
