Collateral Damage

The darkening sky skids past at sixty miles an hour. My eyes are keeping a vigil over the dead fringes of tarmac either side of the road as I drive, flicking from the cars in front of me to the next unidentified something lying up ahead. Please, let it not be pheasant, badger or fox, rabbit, squirrel, deer.

Upturned hub cap.

A wing mirror’s arched black back.

Half-full bin bag.

Flapping coat, carpet, curtain.

Pair of brown shoes, standing up.

Leather boot, lying down.

Each time, a moment of quiet thanks.

***

Broad five-toed paws, curved, steely claws,

muscular forearms shovel and rake through the earth.

You’re digging a new chamber for your young in the underground home that’s sheltered your kin for generations.

Low-slung body moving rhythmically through the blackness,

browning the white stripes of your face.

Your muddied nose maps the starless underworld, orientating you to sleeping cubs, a foe two meters up, everything in between.

***

My speakers are singing something about the bright blessings of our days, about blood-red berries bowing to kiss the earth, about love that falls like summer rain.

It is not in my mind to kill.

It is not in our minds to kill.

But, still.

***

Your belly’s hunger-ache draws you into the twilight overworld of grass and hedgerows, the shadowlands made luminous to you by a net of scent-trails laid down by your ancestors.

A tarmac river runs through this precious heirloom now.

But the voices of those who came before beckon you on,

This is the way we walked.

***

I chant an incantation as dusk turns ink-black and the danger increases.

Stay where you are, safe in your setts, burrows and dens.

Because it helps me to speak that I know they are there, that I might harm them, that I care.

And who am I to know how consciousness weaves and echoes through us all?

***

A low groan, drone. Incomprehensible.

Your underground eyes strain to fathom the nameless predator that’s approaching
faster than fox faster than crow faster faster than any speed you know.

Its number plate mouth bears black teeth, its bite is blessedly quick.

***

My headlights fall on your still body, curled perfectly on the hard shoulder as if comfortable for sleep.

I long to lift you from the tarmac that’s utterly unmoved by your presence, return you to the soft embrace of the earth you’ve spent your life in communion with.

I’d tell you I’m sorry, offer a flower of blessing to honour that you have lived and you have died.

But I can’t stop, it’s not safe, and I’m going too fast.

We all are.

Sarah Thorne is a writer living in Bristol. Her work has been published in a number of magazines and read on BBC Upload. She is starting an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University in the autumn.