What is one life? Our mothers give birth, we grow up (if we're lucky) and eventually the line between life and death crosses our paths.
Maybe a boom or a whisper or a last heartbeat and deep sigh.
Or we drive along, spouse and child securely strapped in.
A large animal, undomesticated, leaps to avoid the incredibly loud and fast object it has no comparison to make against experience, neither mother nor father being able to demonstrate the object's inertial power.
A leap too short.
A shattered windscreen, broken sideview mirror and rear passenger window.
Four lives intersecting.
A broken neck and rear leg with a compound fracture.
Strangers on their way to a football game stopping to offer assistance.
Photographing the vehicle from several angles. Two shots of the deer.
Dragging the deer onto the median. No systematic life left, now a carcass of cooling cells.
Calling emergency services.
Waiting for police assistance.
A stranger with a trailer pulls up and asks if anyone wants the deer.
The spouse says no deer that caused this ruckus will enter their house.
Helping the stranger load the deer onto the trailer. Blood from the deer's mouth leaves a crimson trail from median to trailer ramp to trailer bed.
Memories from childhood of roadside smashups involving people and vehicles only. Crumpled masses with no life left inside.
Thoughts of football game a faded future.
Lifeless photographs in camera.
Sunshine. High altitude feather clouds and contrails whispering that it's okay.
The circle of life. We all die.
No. I want to live. I'm not a deer. I can compute the equations that determine the trajectory needed to jump so high and so far no vehicle of any kind can kill me in an accidental instant.
Or I can stay away from roads.
But I won't.
Even though I want to live and know road travel increases my exposure to broken windscreens and crumpled bodies.
I'm a Wandering Wonderer. My destiny is not mine to choose. Roads are my conduits.
One single life, not solitary, a temporary confluence of states of energy flowing along.
Somewhere, a stranger has gutted a deer. Somwhere, a father, mother and child have assimilated the story of the smashed windscreen into the shared narrative of their lives.
Newspapers and websites tell the stories of the football game, itself a shocking outcome of two forces meeting as one.
The well-traveled road of endless possibilities meets itself at the intersection with the wish for a night of forgotten dreams.
Thanks to Sonye and Michelle at Buddy's BBQ, the KAT crew, the
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