Margins

The form of an unexpected body down the road is expected.  A full curve of muscle and tail frozen to mimic the raccoon’s rings, all too common, and my dog is too interested.  As we pass the body, I pay close attention though there’s nothing I can do.  It’s breathing?  Is it breathing?  I tug against my dog’s excitement to make our circle wider.  Less margin for error.

Normal margins.  Narrow margins.  While writing, I’m constantly playing with word count and who’s words count.  Which margin are we measuring?  Measuring from?  The body is on the edge, but not, of the ditch.  It’s on the edge, but not, of the center line. Life along a country road is marginalized, which is different.

With no visible wounds, the body remains unscathed for days. I glimpse the response of cars.  Each slows.  All take a wide berth around.  The body remains untouched.  I hold my breath.  I furrow my eyes.  I join them or they join me to pay more attention to the dead than the living.  It’s easier to think of what to do once there is nothing else we can do.

The body will get bigger before it gets smaller, a type of cancer.  Inflated rot and clouds of insects shift the size.  Still, it remains.  Surgeons prize clean margins.  Someone.  Anyone.  Everyone.  Ignore the body as long as there’s enough space to go around.  Matted fur loses its shine but not its height.  Time remains for fuzz to flatten, flutter away.  

At night thunderous roars of diesel trucks and towering farm equipment attempt to promise that tomorrow the body will be gone.  They lie.  It’s not.  Days later the road’s edge remains unchanged, still draped in brown fur.  How long will the world go around the dead, instead of finding a new solution?  Or another direction with less pain to witness?  

My dad pushes the body into the ditch.  Wide marks, where metal swept skin, remain.  Whether moist earth or another animal, the body’s transition will be better assisted.  But, mostly, the act of cutting, over, under or through, means we erase.  From our conscious, the margins of our consciousness.  Assignments have limits so I cut words.  I assume which details people most want to hear.  Full pages become notes in the margin.  White pages.  Blacktop.  Each scraped clean.