my eyes burn at the sight of roadkill; my cheeks gather up at either corner like old men throwing bread into Conservatory Water, talking in gentle resignation and understanding about their grandchildren's divorces. i can’t help it, i imagine the dark eyes of whole fox or rabbit families at home watching the clock, as their anxious confusion becomes awful silent knowing.

if it is being made an accidental witness to a small, careless death that turns my whole day, i believe i must not be designed for this world of methodical extermination and calculated agony.

because i don’t want to shore up these stupidly welling tear ducts, i don’t want to harden my heart, i don't want to steel myself against colder winds and higher tides —

i want to find tender and sore the part of me that mourns even those tiny deaths every time i return to it. so what is there to do with it when those tiny deaths become large deaths, transmitted in unfeeling endlessness, in unfeeling news bulletins, in unfeeling waves upon waves upon waves upon waves?