How strange to look for you when you shouldn’t have been there, at all.

Jessica Young
· in ,

On Monday, we drive back from the Kilrush grocery store. Two hundred dollars’ worth of food sits in the trunk, and I’m picturing the meals I’ll make when, halfway home, I see your carcass on the side of the road. Body of an animal. Too large to be a cat or hare, you could be a calf. But you’re folded in on yourself too limply.

On Tuesday we go back to the store, and halfway, there is your carcass. We find some reason we need to go out on Wednesday, too, and there you are again. The day after, unable to find an excuse, we stay home, assume your body is still there, your hairs moving with the wind from passing cars.

Two days later, a friend visits. This time, I remember to look, but your body is gone. I can only notice your absence. It’s all I’ve noticed since.

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Jessica Young’s Pushcart-nominated work has appeared most recently in Copper Nickel, Versal, and Cold Moutain Review. She held the Zell Fellowship for poetry in Ann Arbor, MI after completing her MFA (poetry) at the University of Michigan, where she received two Hopwoods and the 2010 Moveen Residency. Her undergraduate work was at MIT.