If no one mourns the wild
does the wild mourn us?

I saw an animal take its last breaths today.
And felt a shiver that doesn’t make it to my skin.
There was a soft gurgle, like a storm trying to pass through a dry throat.
Air leaving the lungs in folds, like parchment peeled from old scripture.
Breath evaporating into the jaw of dusk, where light curdles and doesn’t return.
A silence that lodged behind its teeth.

No one told me that this could be the final chance to say goodbye.
That sometimes, the end is just a blink no one catches.
Or the thawing of something that had learned stillness,
as if the muscles had rehearsed this vanishing lifetimes ago.

The ground just looked away.

I'm young. little.
death to me is as new as walking to a newborn.

I didn’t know a life could leave without ever having asked to stay.
I didn’t know how grief could get caught in the throat,
like a prayer chewed down to the gristle.