Classical conditioning:

Neutral stimulus paired with aversive stimulus

until the nervous system foams at the corners of the mouth on command.

Scientists figured this out with bells and meat powder.

Dogs strapped into restraints,

spit stringing thick from their jaws in obscene ropes.

Salivary response.

Anticipatory reflex.

Children discovered it much earlier.

No grant funding required.

The body learns:

Footsteps outside the bedroom and suddenly your adrenal glands spit acid into your bloodstream.

Mamma says my name and my mouth peels itself open automatically—

Teeth first. Gum-heavy grin. One eye shut.

Submission display,

the kind dogs do right before they roll over and leak piss onto the kitchen tile.

There is something deeply pornographic about emotional abuse.

Not sexual. Worse.

The intimacy of somebody gripping the soft tissue of your psyche with wet bare hands and kneading it into a more convenient shape while insisting they love you. Thumbprints left everywhere.

Finger-oils all over the developing brain.

But here’s the genius of it:

not constant cruelty.

Intermittent reinforcement.

Afterward she’d soften.

Drive-thru french fries in the grease-slick bag.

A movie on the couch.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Variable reward schedule.

The strongest addictions are built from unpredictability—

casino logic, rat-in-the-box logic:

Maybe this lever gives food.

Maybe this hand pets instead of hits.

That’s the filthy part, the hope.

Hope is disgusting.

Hope is the mutt licking the boot hovering over its velvet throat.

My mother never needed bells.

Just her voice through a doorway and every organ inside belly-crawling obediently to heel—

lungs first,

then stomach,

then that ugly little rabbit-heart kicking itself bloody against its cage of ribs.

I belong to someone, he says, look, it’s right there in the neck, you can feel it if you press

your fingers in just right,

Foreign body. A little hard speck. Rice-grain small—

And I think Yes, that’s

the whole problem, that’s the crux of it, that’s the thing I’ve been trying to say.

Registered. Accounted for.

Returned, always returned, to the one who named me, who filled out the paperwork, who paid

the fee and said Mine.

There’s a number attached to me somewhere in the dark of me,

and it says call this number, call this house,

the dog got out again.

Do you see? Do you understand what I’m telling you? There’s a whole system designed

to make sure I come back.

Every road leads home and home

is just another word for her.

Good Samaritan stranger found me wandering.

He said Poor thing,

and he was kind about it, in the beginning they’re always kind about it,

gentle-handed and coaxing,

and I thought: yes, this is it, this is the one who won’t, and then of course

he did. He does. He will again. But I’ve been seen to, see,

I’ve been cared for, shots up to date, teeth looked at, coat brushed glossy,

the shelter says Someone’s been taking good care of you and I think Yes,

someone has, that’s exactly right,

that’s the whole mechanism of it, kept and kept-up, loved

the way a car is loved, maintained for function, washed on Sundays.

There’s no way to explain the difference.

He says Come here and I come, not because I want to, not anymore,

but because the wanting has been trained out of me so slowly

I didn’t notice until it was done.

That’s the genius of it. That’s the long con. You don’t break them all at once

or they bite, you break them incrementally, gradual and then

complete.

And now there’s a chip in me that says I’m hers,

that says if I get out, if I make it to the road, if someone finds me

dazed and limping on the shoulder of the highway, and thinks

Oh, this one belongs to somebody—

they’ll scan me and they’ll find her, they’ll dial the number and she’ll come,

she’ll be so relieved, she’ll be so glad,

she’ll say There you are, she’ll say I was so worried, and I will look up

with my whole stupid face and I will believe her, again,

I will believe her because what else is a kicked dog supposed to do

with love but take it?

You think I’m kidding but this is how it happens.

This is where we’ve gotten to. This is the shape of it:

I ran, I was found, I was scanned, I was returned.

There, says the database. There, says the shelter worker.

There, says her hand, pressing the small hard fact of ownership

into my scruff—

see? See? You will always find your way back