Tending
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As I was leaving Kroger, a dead squirrel lay in the street, parts of this creature not meant to be outside of her pink against the street and her cinnamon-gray body.
I drove past her and then, after checking my glove compartment, turned around and pulled into the Dollar General parking lot, the closest to this sibling’s unnecessary end.
I pulled several thick paper napkins from the glove compartment. Self-conscious as cars and people passed, I walked to her and picked her up in the napkins.
“Where do I place her body?” It wasn’t yet stiff. Was I feeling warmth from it still? The blood was still fresh.
I walked to the nearest bush, and placed the corpse close to its trunk. Still aware that I was in a public space not made for death rituals, I did not take time to arrange the body, but did find a leaf to cover her mutilated head, the part of her I hope her relatives will never see.
“I’m sorry, little one.”
I walked away, got in my car and drove home, listening to the report about Gazans driving and walking miles south from their homes, carrying what few possessions they could, with little or no access to water, not knowing if they would see their homes again, not knowing if they would make it south, not knowing if going south would offer anything different from what they left.
Then and now I hope the neither Palestinians nor Israelis will see human bodies in the same condition as the squirrel I moved. Even as I type, this hope is being shot and bombed.
1200 Israelis dead so far.
2215 Palestinians dead so far.
So far.
Both numbers will rise. With the cutoff of food, water, electricity to Gaza, with hundreds of thousands of people internally displaced, with bombs and a likely ground invasion, the number of Palestinian deaths will rise more precipitously.
I don’t understand how people kill other people, no matter the reason given.
Across the world I moved a dead squirrel’s body, offering a small death ritual here because I cannot tend to the dead there.
