The whitest walls I’ve ever seen sit like static, alight. Fluorescents burn my canine senses just like these thick socks cover my dog-claws, grips on the bottom to keep me from slipping down the slope. I’ve been sitting here twenty-eight minutes. You’d think a room this empty would make some noise in a place like this, like its open mouth doorway would yell an echo to fetch the nurses. You’d think I wouldn’t be waiting twenty-eight minutes. I pick up my book but have trouble reading it. Nerves like fuzz, I got. Brain like fuzz, I got. I skipped yoga today on account of the fuzz, why couldn’t we have art therapy instead? Something to keep the paws busy.

A girl walks in and she looks like how cherry soda tastes. That boom-bam berry lipstick and fizzy flutter eyes. She’s got a red sweetness that stings your mouth hot. And I think she must’ve just gotten here, her makeup is perfect, like she’s a 1960s housewife who broke out of her collar. Out of her white fence. Out of her oven mitts. The white on the walls reaches for her but she doesn’t even flinch; a real greyhound (if she were a dog) undone and reinstated. 

And I’m just this junkyard mutt with fur sticking up north and south and wherever else. I got patches and spots and all this fuzz in my mouth. She catches me looking her over, checking out the new dog in the pound as I hold my shaky book half-open. 

“Hey,” she says with a giveaway mouth splitting open and upwards. And her teeth gleam a slight yellow from the cigarettes.