dogs and men by elias donstad

The dog pulled its leash as the owner said, he’s friendly, despite the snarl and bared teeth.

I took a step back, holding my hands out to preemptively buffer any attack should the leash break or the handler’s grasp fail. I don’t say owner because who can own life of any kind, human or animal.

​Ever since childhood, I have hated dogs. Maybe I inflated fear into hatred. As an infant, a dachshund bit me unprovoked. I required stitches on my face. I couldn’t remember the event, but I could see the evidence on my cheek and feel it every time I recoiled at the sight or sound of a dog. My parents felt the need to apologize for their skittish daughter even though they failed to protect their child, resulting in my injuries and fear.

When a man came to my home because he wanted my body, he looked at my apartment as barren and lifeless as my womb and asked, do you have any pets? 

I do not believe any animal can be domestic, I replied, too honestly. I also don’t want anything dirty in my home.

I realized by letting him inside my home and inside me, I had allowed dirt into the crevices I took pride in keeping clean. Because I compromised myself so much already, I lit a cigarette and exhaled the smoke into the whirring vent of my bathroom. The smoke meandered around my lungs. The thrill of hurting myself careened. I put out my half-smoked cigarette on the exposed skin of my thigh to get the thrill back. When the feeling was lackluster, I relit the cigarette to repeat the action, hoping for a different result.

Elias Donstad (he/him) graduated from USD with his M.A. in English May 2022. In a review of Transitions: The Unheard Stories, Laura Kate Dale calls his poem “Mirror Stage,” “visual and structurally tactile,” which are attributes he tries to bring into much of his poetry. Donstad’s prose and poetry relating to the body and medical transition has also been published in Broken Antler, Hartwood Literary Magazine, Red Coyote, and TransMuted among others.