Subcutaneous fat
Pavement
More than road rash
Maybe it’s easier to recite insect orders
Neuroptera, Megaloptera, Mecoptera
Than think about all the moths flying
Into the glare of emergency lights
Red white red white red white
Subcutaneous fat, blood spattered on pavement
Orthopera, Hemiptera, Diptera
The horse’s corpse two miles up the highway
Unrelated, but,
Same time of death
0230, 0231, 0232
It’s a different number wherever I ask
And on his daughter’s clock, he’s still alive
He hasn’t struck a deer
Hasn’t laid down his bike
Hasn’t been run over one two three—
maybe four different times
Who hit this man?
The same person who hit the horse?
Dermaptera
I want to go back to feeding earwig colonies cat food
Hymenoptera
I want to go back to sterilizing bee hotels
Lepidoptera
I want to go back to counting caterpillars
in a room that’s controlled by an app on a phone
and why is it always this same stretch of highway?
and why is is always with this same partner?
and why can’t I stop imagining her say hurry up, baby, hurry up
Before another car struck him right before her eyes—
I hope she does have a concussion
Hope she never remembers that pitch black night
Illuminated only in headlights
Taking her man apart piece by piece, pavement riddled with human meat
I think the deer and the horse suffered less, together, than he did
pieces
Scattered along across some forty yards
Two hours on scene and still the answers evade me
My coffee smells like blood
The skin on my hands is dry
My partner and I are both still awake
A small part of me says,
There is still a 52 degree room of 116 caterpillars out there,
unaware of everything, shitting as quickly as they feed on Carex stricta
Obliviously
Just Thoughts 