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?
We grow up.
We move on.
We leave behind ruined shells that used to contain us.
We think them sad.
We feel justified yet guilty about walking away.
We lock them up.
Truths, formerly cast in stone;
truths, that shaped and confined us;
truths, that gave purpose and comfort,
that lead to pain and murder,
to greatness and gore…
now ephemeral and poignant,
like dead birds on the side of the road –
road-kill.
The world taken apart by the next generation
and put together in a slightly different pattern,
to form a new truth cast in jigsaw,
to await the next player.
