Have you ever looked a person straight in the eye
Close enough to see your reflection staring back at you
Except its not really you
Its a little bit blurry and you look like you would in a fun house mirror, you know, the ones at those cheap carnivals that pass through once a year to set up in the field next to the convenience store right on the edge of town
That one
You look all tall
Your waist is as thick as your wrist
And your head looks like someone stuck a air pump in your ear and decided see if they could make you float
You don't
but that's not the point
The point is that its not you

Its the version of you they know
The one they see
The version they have in a little folder tucked away and filed under "just another kid" where you fit snuggly between that guy who sits next them in math class and their first crush in sixth grade
That is if they remember you

And its the weirdest thing
The idea that someone who barely knows you could eventually become someone so close to you when the first picture they had of you wasn't even, well
You
And your entire relationship with this person depends on whether or not you allow them a clear view or just distort yourself beyond recognition
Whether you become you

Sometimes I like to think that my dogs know me better than anyone else
They listen
They love
But they don't understand do they
No I suppose not
After all how could they possibly comprehend that the incoherent mumbling that they hear at midgnight on what you know will be another sleepless night is you bearing your soul to them
In the words of what is actually the complicated results of thousands upon thousands of years and thousands upon thousands of people making the best efforts they can to communicate and rely the message of what's happening in the theater of our mind where our memories and dreams constantly play
But perhaps my questions have less to do with dogs and their understandings of human language as how human language effects us

Like how one can  be expected to turn something as powerful as the human heart into words on paper
How can the soothing feeling you get when its raining be explained
How could a four letter word express that you would die for someone in a second if it would make them happy
We think of words as the key to the mind when in reality its like looking through a keyhole into the worlds greatest library and hoping to witness all its wonders
Its just gives you the fun house reflection


Human beings are a species dependent on words
We trust that those who we lend our words to won't abuse them, but what guarantee do we have
Their word?
What good is others word when we ourselves have been known to deceive our own using the same weapons
Because that's what words are
Actually let me rephrase that
That's what words can become
And that's the funny thing about them