God bless the roadkill
Lessons on playing in traffic
I want to build an altar and on it I want to honor all of the animals killed by vehicles. I want to honor the roadkill, as I do with every little prayer I say when I pass by another soul lost to the pavement. I tell the crows to enjoy their meal, and the ease of access to it. It’s almost like stolen valor: these crows didn’t have to kill anything in order to feast on that unfortunate squirrel who was simply trying to make it to safety. And yet, they feast. Valor or no valor, everyone’s gotta eat.
Those who would feast on my remains—and gleefully so—didn’t do the killing. It’s me who flung myself off of any imagined pedestals and landed squarely in the middle of the asphalt, standing suddenly in the face of those blinding lights. They will feast on their stolen valor and absorb the nutrients I’ve provided for them, and they will metabolize my mistakes to make themselves stronger. My shortcomings, performed publicly, are turned into calories and churned away in their stomachs until what’s left behind is all burned up. Reduced to carbon, our common denominator.
This carbon settles in their bones and hardens them, providing more structure to the story. Whatever doesn’t suit the narrative gets sent to their intestines to be processed as waste. All of these nutritional benefits come from my hasty decision—much like a squirrel’s decision to dash across 5 lanes in a 40 MPH zone—which was mine alone to make, and remains mine to reckon with. And yet, they feast.