“Dogs on the Beach” by Taryn Tilton (fiction ’16)
Dogs on the Beach
I do not like things I cannot see the shape of: there are dogs on the beach in the distance, there’s breathing under the bridge.
It’s early morning. I’m out of breath. I’ve buried my feet in the sand. The dogs hobble and call out but I can’t be sure because I’m on the phone with my sister, who is telling me about a new kind of meditation. You tie a small weight to the end of a string, swallow it, and hold on to the other end. You wait for two days until it passes through your body. Then you have one end between your legs and the other out your mouth. She anticipates all my questions. “What then?” I ask. You can pull it, slowly. “Isn’t that harmful?” I ask. It’s just a string, she says, but I meant a kind of damage unseen.
