Their bodies litter our roads:
expected, almost unnoticed, left by the wayside…
not murdered –
killed accidentally by inattention to familiar routes,
too trivial for pathos, too pointless for tragedy.
We live our lives next to each other,
leaving behind little corpses of our selves and of others’,
unseen, extinguished by inattention of habit:
road-kill.
I wonder how much will be left alive
by the end of the day?
New day begins.
You waken, bleary-eyed.
You see the sheets.
You turn.
You see the ceiling
with stripes of light and dark –
eternal battle,
its pattern etched on retinas from days
and weeks, and years of repeat exposure.
You move inexorably to your cup of coffee,
unknowingly repeating the procedure
of brushing teeth
and putting on the clothes,
glance in the mirror with routine regret
and follow your daily train of thought:
“It could be worse, but then, it could be better…”
But suddenly the dusty mirror surface
distorts the image of your face and room
a little more than usual and you
look once again.
Your train of thought derailed,
you stop and think –
again.
Realisation
hits like a brick –
you see the dusty mask
you built through habit,
layer upon layer
of expectations,
making life routine
and liveable.
But underneath the mask
the horrifying emptiness of space
just barely warmed up by random motion
is looking back with no intent or care.
And then your body fills with acrid joy
of life and thought,
of you, against the odds,
being occasionally self-aware.
