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| I killed a young boy on my drive to work this morning. | |||
| For whatever reason he was there, he was there. Not a freeway, but fast just the same, it was four lanes in two directions with one small figure only transparent in the fog. | |||
| Baby blue footed pyjamas, ragged and torn. | |||
| He was dragging a loveweary stuffed dog, faded chocolate brown and browned milkcream color spots, with one glass beady eye, and a gentle ju-juing ribbon worn to strands and fibers around the noose-neck. | |||
| He was one of those platnium blonde children of the corn with bright blue eyes, but one of those platnium blonde that darkens to brown, and eyes that follow. | |||
| Chubby little guy, standing curiously turned at the front of my gas eating child killing roaring black giant world killing sport utility vehicle. He knew just for just one moment that this rushing brute of a car, rushing brute of a man didn't want to be his friend. | |||
| Didn't want to play, didn't want to take the time to watch him any longer, with his trappings of childhood slung happily around him, a little cold for being outside, but also a little flushed for being outside. | |||
| I wish now that there was time to brake; he wasn't there until it was too late to do anything else but hit him, solid and square. | |||
| Tiny body would not be, and was not, a match for the solid and unyeilding metal and plastic. So short, and so small, I couldn't see him at all when I felt the barest of thumps. If there is anything that big, unweildy world killing vehicles are good for, is not noticing what you're driving on, or over. | |||
| It spread over me like a slow flood, like a stopped motion waters break, a birth of an empty and meaningless road, ashfault and concrete median, slickly black in the almost rainy morning. | |||
| The rearview showed a gently tumbled bundle, laundry on a sunday morning jumped in pile of warm that gets cold too fast, and then it isn't sunday morning jumped in laundry time again ever. | |||
| And just like him, the littlest one that is gone but wished for, you never see that loss coming. | |||
| You can stare and stare at the oncoming traffic, translucent in the fog and light of a six o'clock morning, and you can fade off into your morning face burning coffee. | |||
| Blast furnace fast over empty miles between where you live and love and where you earn. And inbetween the concrete and yellow lines, there's always that little boy you'd thought was long ago that bundle in your mirror, standing squarely in front of you, with that curious stare, wondering when it is again, that you're going to stop and play with him. | |||
| And in that troubling moment, but only a moment, you realize what has crushed under your wheels, and there is the bitterest of coffee smiles. | |||
| And we desperately clamor to mature, to pass that kid and think, ever so hatefully, that it was about time you grew up anyway. | |||