Impotence

I grasp the red fox by the scruff. The cars keep coming, headlamps loud.   The fox is still warm, fur soft, limbs swinging loose, head lolling.  I know it is dead, the pull in my gut as it span under the tyre.  The last one I saved was before the election; groggy, gashed. It sat shivering on my white plimsoll until the RSPCA came.  We celebrated the magic of saving a creature, of the possibility of winning against death.

I lay the fox on the pavement, a neat package of sinew and meat, sharp teeth, the parody of a smile. There is not much blood.  Two japanese women give sad bows as they pass.

I want to hug it back to life, change time’s course.

In a dry hot place a soldier will shoot an unarmed man in the head.  People blurred with anxiety and need will die alone.  I will break inside like an undermined tooth.

What had seemed solid collapses to ash in our hands like trying to lift burned sticks from the fire that warmed us the night before.

We did not win.  We do not recover.

I have failed: The fox is dead.

No cars stop.