Photography © Chad Parenteau

 

SR9

Driving home in the dark. It’s raining and cold outside as
I pass a dead doe lying on the side of the road.
Death looked fresh.
Her face still had life in it, a soft glow of warmth in the dark.
Her body still held its beautiful gold color.
Her legs were splayed out at odd, different angles.
There was no blood.
She was barely off the road – I had to swerve to miss her.
As if someone,
too concerned with the cold or the rain
haphazardly shoved her body merely a foot to the right after they killed her.

Don’t you see I am the dead doe?
Right outside of my town
on the busy road back to my house. Dead and fresh,
the going light still fading in my eyes.
Lying in the way as people continue to rush around me.
No one there can see. I am her,
and she will lay there until god, or nature, takes her body.
She is nothing remarkable,
nothing extraordinary.
People will pass a lazy eye over her body as they continue on their way.
I am young like her,
or at least how she used to be.
It’s the burnout that kills you slowly –
she was just spared the suffering of it.
I am dead at 20 and she is dead lying in the road.

 

Olivia Shearer: “I’m a junior at Indiana University pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English and a minor in History. I come from a place where art and literature have been a reprieve and a tool to express myself and make sense of the world. College has been very enjoyable for me and someday I hope to become a teacher myself.

Chad Parenteau is Associate Editor of Oddball Magazine.