Dog Head

Our mascot was the bulldog. Bulldogs chased me across playgrounds until I dreamed them. In class, I finished mazes with a green crayon. Hedges grew skyward from pages, and I ran. My dad once called this kind of thing my day-head. When my day-head happened, they called him at his office. I learned the name Daedalus from an article I read for science class. It meant a plane with leg-powered wings — carbon tubing, plastic skin. A man with a long name flew a longer way across the sea from Crete. At recess, I reread the same book of illustrated myths and cryptids. I dreamed of bulldogs with bulls’ heads. My day-head was a zoo where gods slept.Daedalus sounded like dad, so I loved him. Class was an enclosure made of cinder block and twelve weeks without winter. Behind the glass, my day-head paced. Daedalus was a zookeeper. I dreamed of a god with a bull’s body and a hood sewn from my face. The article said I weighed the same as the Daedalus. I traced flight plans and crash sites on my desk. My teacher asked us to draw self-portraits. The trees were hydras. On the paper, I drew an outline of my face. I cut my eyes out with scissors. They called me to the office, and Daedalus was waiting. I found a bulldog in a magazine and drew a maze inside each iris. We played tug-of-war in gym. My day-head was a knotted rope dangling from steel rafters. I pushed my thumb into the sun. I fell once. I cut the bulldog from the page, then ripped his head in two. I glued one half over the left side of my face. I left the right side blank. The article said the Daedalus crashed twenty-one feet from the black sand of a beach on Santorini. My day-head was a Kevlar fuselage belly-down in the sea. They called home. I ran home. On the right side of my face, I drew a sunny day. I signed my name.