I understood that the doe had not died on impact,
and that it was mangled behind my car on the flat, curved road.
I stopped right in the middle of the double-yellow line, and waited.
All my windows were down. Nothing moved.
There were no lights on the flat plain.
The air was crisp. Nothing was on the radio.
The sun before I hit the deer was full, aching, and burning.
It looked like a tomato, or a badly infected eye.
And you could hear the bells on the necks of the emaciated cows, clinking and lost.
A calf bleating in the field. Someone somewhere starting their car two towns over.
The place was that quiet.
I called Cassandra an hour later, and she said that I should’ve gone back and killed it.
How?, I thought. By driving over its head?
I learned two years later that even the blood will evaporate
if you give it a chance. It will rise up into a big, red cloud
That will lug itself low over the flat, burnt country.
From up and down I-88. To my parents’ home in Wheaton.
To a murky Denver reservoir: it comes, rains, falls, and goes.
Like a lonely traveller, it picks up knick-knacks along the way.