daynabhattiroberts.blog

that day we watched the sun dip below the turnpike 

that day we passed a mangled bird and deer 

and i drove by them wearing a paper crown like the regal piece of shit i am 

don’t they deserve more? don’t we?

than these rolling fields? no, there is nothing like these rolling fields 

than these sticky hot gravel roads redone in their black tar to hide the carcasses that came before 

every summer we paint the highways red and every winter we atone for it in traffic blockages 

so, yes. they deserve more. but us?  

it’s the same thing, isn’t it? every time, every year, every century  

the bombings, the starvings, the purposeful mutilation framed as retribution for the great sin of living  

i picture this; those animal bodies strewn across our roads like the taxidermy trophies in an unhappy house

i picture this: those children trapped behind that metal door in the school they once thought the safest place in the world, strewn exactly like those animals  

but in the summer it’s a different kind of killing; animals, we can live with that 

it seems, though, we can live with the children dying too. the mess is just a lot more challenging than the roadkill we let rot under a boiling sun

and isn’t hunting season in winter, too? isn’t everything bad in winter or is summer hiding it with it’s warm puckered lips and sweet lies

but they all hide from us. because a massacre of millions is not supposed to be so quiet. a dead deer is not to be avoided when driven by