Nothing is everything and pain is a good show. That’s what you can learn on the side of the road.
The wind breezes overhead, it lightly tickles the gummy-tacked hair that rests over its cheek. It doesn’t move. The shallow ditch it rests in keeps it somewhat insulated, warmed by the earth.
Its stared at the same sky for a week straight. It can’t move, it won’t. Its just a bit tired, it just needs to rest more, just a few more minutes, and then it might get up and try coming home.
There’s a rustle of trees overhead, little bright green drops of leaves. Waxy, spring dews that reflected the late afternoon sun. It wishes it could still see them, but its sockets have distended, leaking all potassium back into the dirt. Fertilize, make a field next year with this, give unto thee this gift.
A boney digit shifts and cracks off from the brethren knuckles with an especially hard breeze. Ah, the illusion of the sky got broken by this, and it’s made to return onto rumination about its placement and where it is. How it got here. Why is it here?
Why did he leave it here?
Did it do something wrong?
It’s cold here, it’s lonely.
How long has it been? It can feel the dryness creeping into its bones, marrow is leaking out by now, rotting, liquifying, back into the ground again now, sweetie.
Spider-leg digits creep over the edge of the ditch. Brittle protein-decayed nails claw for leverage, something, anything, please. It’s heavy like a waterlogged chest full of thick dresses, swaying with effort to pull upward, pushing every fiber with the force of an animal’s lunge, and only getting the result of walking through mud. Effort, never before has it felt it as out of reach. It feels as heavy and empty as when Issy left it without food for days. To keep it small, keep it young, keep it easy and needy.
It’s not fair. Lower mandibles drop open from the wasted muscle tissue. It could cry, sob, like every other time it was cold and scared that Issy abandoned it in the cage. What did it do wrong? Was it no good? It’s no use, its larynx is crawling with beetles and ear wigs, nothing to vibrate against the paper thin throat.
It’s not fair. It did everything right, it listened, it learned, it smiled and loved and cooed and barked on command. Why was it no good? Did Issy hate it? Why? Issy made it what it is, did Issy not make it for himself and himself only?
Overhead, a bright light trails in the sky. A shooting star? A comet? Didn’t Issy say you could wish on them once, when it was smaller, even smaller than this wasted form.
It wished it could see Issy one more time..
At least that one thing Issy said was true, he wasn’t always honest, this once he was. It could feel. More than just little crawling feet and hollow asleep limbs. A pit, deep in it’s chest and belly, a hunger, or a new way to breathe?
Trying to sit upright, gasping deep from the gullet. It screamed.
“Please, don’t leave me alone!
I’ll be good this time, I’ll do better!
