Neuro Logical
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.