Kathryn Silver-Hajo
Bones of Contention
We were all enjoying an amiable afternoon at the dog park. Aromas of lilacs and grass mingling with the occasional waft of poo. We chatted about rising daycare prices and the strangeness of bare shelves at the grocery store. We groaned over the alarming frequency of fires and floods, how there’s always some new war blazing somewhere. We spoke of feverishly-mutating viruses, the greed of politicians, how it all threatened to disrupt the pleasant quiet of our lives—a dire future looming in our peripheral vision. Yet here we were, our children chasing each other, shrieking with joy. Dogs yapping, sniffing each other’s butts, cheerfully wagging until one of them dragged some smelly, mysterious thing from the bushes and two-by-two they engaged in a feral tug-of-war like wolves on a gazelle carcass. As some retreated, others leapt in. A few of us tried to separate the snarling creatures, but someone took offense, screamed Get your hands off my fucking dog! And another yelled back, Get your mangy cur off o’ mine. Soon we were all hurling insults and trading blame over which animal—and which person—started it. Our children extended chubby, dimpled hands towards us, begging us to stop, but none of us heeded their cries, as canines and humans raged in a snarl of insults, bared teeth, grabbing, pushing, ripping. The dogs eventually began backing away, whining and licking their owners’ hands before giving up, tails between their legs. When it finally broke up, we emerged bruised and bleeding, yanked our panting pets and dazed children away. We headed home, avoiding each other’s eyes, unable to block out the wails of our children that seemed to echo all the griefs of the world like one great, collective howl.
Kathryn Silver-Hajo is a 2023 Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best American Food Writing nominee. Her story, “The Sweet Softness of Dates” was selected for the 2023 Wigleaf Top 50 longlist. Kathryn’s work appears in Atticus Review, Craft Literary, Pithead Chapel, Ruby Literary and many other lovely journals. Her flash collection, Wolfsong, was published in 2023 and her novel, Roots of The Banyan Tree, is forthcoming in Fall of 2023. More at: kathrynsilverhajo.com; facebook.com/kathryn.silverhajo; twitter.com/KSilverHajo; instagram.com/kathrynsilverhajo
