Roadkill
My girlfriend snaps when she sees roadkill. She used to do a single clap, but that felt weird. Like I was applauding the death, so now she snaps. Just once. I add the sound her fingers make to the list of things I love about her. Decide to start doing it too (snapping), and it feels better. Feels better to acknowledge the pain we see and try to ignore; the fog is thick this morning.
Thickest I’ve ever seen, maybe. Driving to work, I feel grateful for routine. Feel grateful to have the turns already committed to my memory I mean. I can only see the car in front of me. Can only see the highway exit signs if I am right beneath them; it is fall and the leaves are changing.
I catch myself asking if they are still there (the trees), hidden behind all of this grey. I decide that they are. Try painting the colors myself and hate the result Fuck. The car behind me is riding my ass. A bold move with such low visibility, to be driving the way they are. Driving like somebody’s life is at stake—I lost them both in September. I have no anger left.
And carefully pull over to the let the car pass. It speeds past the two of us (me and the dead racoon) sitting on the side of the road. The steering wheel is cold as I press my forehead to it. I breathe deeply because you can’t. I lost them both in September, so I snap once for the racoon carcass.
Snap again for the painted leaves, snap again for whoever that is (in the rearview) staring back at me. I could write a song with all these snaps. Start a fire from the friction. Use it to light a candle or a cigarette or just let my fingers melt—the smoke adding to the fog.
I drive slowly to keep it burning.
Lauren Saxon is a queer, Black poet and engineer living in Portland, ME. She loves her cats, her Subaru, and being chronically online. Lauren’s work is featured in Barrelhouse, Empty Mirror, Across the Margin, Homology Lit, and more. Her debut chapbook, You’re My Favorite won the 2023 Maine Literary Award for Book of Poetry, and is out now with Thirty West Publishing.
