To the Other Dead Cat on Thomas Hynes Road - Yelaina Anton

I saw your cousin just last December.

He was white, or at least he once was.

Now there you are, a mottled, grey thing.

You’re smaller, and you’re younger. Your

cousin should have known better than to go

chasing cars, but you… You didn’t know better.

No one told you any better.

I wanted so badly to do for you what I couldn’t

do for your cousin: I wanted so badly to pick you

up, to wrap you in the forgiving jumper I bought

last December, the same day your cousin. That

sweater is worn now. Those pills and little fuzzes

keep gathering and collecting, and I don’t know

how to take them off.

Last December, I had never seen a dead animal

so close before. This time—with you—I was closer.

I wouldn’t let myself look before, but this time, I did.

I saw you, sprawled across the concrete, flat as a pan-

cake. I saw that wet haze around you, and it was not rain.

I was with my friends when I saw your cousin last December.

This time I was alone.

It was you and me and the stretch

of the Thomas Hynes between us.

I cared,

but still I did nothing.

- Yelaina Anton

Yelaina Anton hails from a small city outside Boston, USA and is studying Creative Writing at NUI Galway. She writes fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, and she's happy to write about anything dark or odd. Her work has been published in Perhappened Magazine and is forthcoming in Versification.