For the Armadillo, My Sympathy

It doesn’t have a name—the night I hit and killed 
an armadillo crossing Route 13 somewhere between

Carbondale and Murphysboro. It rolled up inside itself, 
like a hard year that has lasted longer than anyone wanted,

when there came a harsh thud and smack under the car, 
the wheel shocks crushing the armored shell of the animal.

Taught from an early age not to brake, to go right through 
and lessen the chances of harming myself—I sacrificed

the armadillo to whatever god had lost track of its creation. 
I didn’t even know we had armadillos in Illinois,

and I have spent most of my life wanting to be alone too, 
like this solid-plated creature, horned and scute covered.

A shield is designed to eventually betray a body.
Your eyesight, animal I harmed, did you no favors either.

What I’m trying to say is that nothing lasts longer 
than it needs to. Nothing will protect you, nor me,

if a predator is coming straight at you with no regard 
for the law. The predator always chooses himself.

I came back for you the next day—not to save you
but to witness the accident I fell into, the guilt inherited

from stealing everything. But you were gone, scraped clean 
by vultures or city cleanup. Nothing left but painted asphalt,

the heat of the day beginning to mirage the road 
like a portal opening into a parallel life—

one where you make it across the road, back home
to your claw-dug den in a stranger’s backyard, beneath

a newly built patio, where good sleep exists between the end 
of one good thing and another good thing waiting to happen.

Read more from Issue 19.1.