Dog Death. Text Clutter. by Ashley Kim

Dog Death. Text Clutter.

texts from my mother, to my mother

Ashley Kim

Several voice recordings entitled bark 2 teddy growl teddy whimper 2

She wants them all, surprisingly.

A three-second video of the dead dog shaking after his bath. Limp string fur. Black eyes surrounded by dark brown cakey eye mucus. An old over-stuffed bookcase. Mousy brown carpet that needs replacing.

She wants that, too.

A link to a Coach Outlet embroidered daisy bag on sale.

Get it. I’ll pay for it, she replies.

Office hours for symbolic logic from 5-8 today, I tell her unceremoniously. I will probably eat dinner upstairs while studying.

Cool, she replies. We haven’t cooked for a week. Safeway softened eggplant and leafy yang baechu wilts in the fridge.

15

She sends videos and photos. I save them for staring purposes. I want to cry but I don’t know how. The dead dog is young. He barks for a collection of cloth ropes, a hardy turquoise duck, a fat loofah. The dead dog is slightly older. He chews a flimsy chicken on the black leather couch Dad liked. The dead dog sits by the ornate Christmas tree. The dead dog eats string cheese. The dead dog greets us after a two-week long vacation in Florida, or South Korea, I don’t remember. The dead dog sits with my mother. The dead dog sleeps with me. Nestled in mustard stripe bedsheets, body warmth, borrowed jackets.

Today at 11:30 p.m. Eastern time is the full pink moon. Let’s watch it, she says. We wait for the moon at 8:30 p.m. that night. The moon is luminous, cream, hopeful. It never turns pink.