| Here's one more I wrote last semester. It's about a real raccoon that I used to pass every day on the way to class.
This is all Just a Roadside Memorial to Humanity.
There is a raccoon ripped to shreds on the railroad tracks. It has been there for months.
At first it was disgusting, fly-covered, rotting. I walked by, avoiding the head first and the body that lay a few feet beyond. It stared at me, jaw gaping, black eyes ripping. I imagined the raccoon scampering around, looking for food, not knowing what to do when the light came screaming down the track. The wheels creaked, and when the horn blasted, the raccoon looked up from the rail. The raccoon looked up, stared into the conductor’s eyes, pleading, and then there was nothing but black.
Now I walk by the raccoon every day. It has been a long time since the maggots and flies stopped gnawing. It has been months since I could see blood drying upon the rocks -- making them sticky to walk across. During the summer, the humidity kept the raccoon’s skin from drying. Now that it is fall, the skin is a brown-black, and the fur has been picked off, bit by bit. The hide lays motionless beside the rail.
It seems that everyone has forgotten about the raccoon, though I will not. The raccoon has slowly become a part of me. I walk by, and I defile the only space it has. I have come to respect the raccoon, yet I do not trust it. I have grown paranoid of it; in I fear that my destiny will be the same. The raccoon lays on the tracks and seems to be leaving me with each tuft of hair that is ripped from the pelt by passersby carelessly trotting down the track.
When the raccoon gets covered by snow, I will think of it. My footsteps will dodge around it, because even when I can no longer see it, I know the raccoon remains. I will come visit in the spring, when the snow melts, and I hope it will be there. If not, perhaps I'll put up one of those tacky roadside memorials -- the crosses with silk flowers attached that become tattered by the weather.
I will remember the raccoon, because we are all raccoons, and every day we look up and the noise and the light are coming closer, charging. Every night when you go to bed, remember, everything goes black. |