This one gets a frenzied look in her eyes. The sound of cloth tearing and rubber squelching against wet teeth makes me shudder, a little instinct in me responding to a little instinct in her. She could open my skin if she was overcome by fear or hunger and I’m proud of her for that. 

As silly as it sounds, that’s the feeling I look for at my spin studio. I occasionally feel my body’s meaningless strength on a stationary bike and enjoy it. I occasionally see myself in the mirror with my teeth bared in effort and feel proud. But passing through the locker room on my way to that feeling is torment; once I was so shocked by what I saw in the mirror when I shed my coat and outside clothes that I felt myself abject in slow motion. I saw protrusions of flesh where before, at various hungry points in my life, I had seen smooth muscles and subtle angles of bone. I forgot that the latter is an image I cannot be and the former is the truth; I forgot to recognize me in the reflection.

Between her and me is three paces of space, at once a reservoir of bile and a void full of mist. I look at her as if she can’t look back, as if my facial expression can’t hurt her. I look and wish my looking could cut her down. I do the trick mirror test they tell us to do in fitting rooms, running my hand over the stripe of flesh between the bottom of my sports bra and the top of my leggings. I feel someone else’s body and my cold fingers at the same time and I flinch.

I think the dog enjoys her body because she knows it’s hers. Every choice belongs to her, every action is for her. Maybe she knows that she has a master who controls what she eats and when she goes outside but that doesn’t change that her body is its own government. It serves her, she serves it. There’s no space between her and selfhood because she’s never standing across from herself. 

Between her and me is three paces of contested space, at once buzzing with arguments over how things should be and silent as a tomb. I’m obliged to make sacrifices for her, not me. I’m obliged to make an offering to her, then of her to the world, with no expectation that I’ll get anything in return. When I rip her open it’s me who feels the pain but she who bears the pretty mark.

Perhaps I hate the image, a spare composition in a guilt frame, because the bidding war has begun and already I can’t afford the price. I can look but never possess, and this ekphrasis doesn’t feed me at all. If I could consume myself, I could be a self sustaining.

A dog doesn’t want to die because the point of life is to live.

Emily Daniel is a writer and news editor in Chicago. She publishes a Substack on gender and the grotesque called Medusa’s Body.