Initial Conditions

apology to roadkill

i saw you,
too late to hit the brakes,
and struck you,
in such a way that you didn't instantly die,
and i felt not as awe full as i should have,
as i watched you shrink in the floating glass,
leaping to unsquirrelly heights,
back-flipping, wriggling, and writhing in horrific seizures,
until you disappeared from view.
i feigned hope that you'd recover,
but there is no clearer evidence than a corpse,
and there yours lay in the road,
when i drove by the next day.
your ghost is too kind,
so i will torment myself for not having swerved, or stopped to dispatch you, or even to remove your crushed bones from the road,
and will remind myself, with this poem,
that i am sorry

🐿

One of the most awful experiences of my life was driving on after having hit a squirrel. It darted in front of me at just the wrong time. I never want to have that happen again and I feel like I owe it to the poor little fella to never forget, so I wrote this poem to memorialize them, but if you read the poem you already know that.

(When writing that note, I mistyped darted as farted and only when I was trying to come up with something to close with did I catch it. As depressing as this story was, I am grateful that karma also uses humor to bring things back into balance. Worth a reread.)