The week I resigned myself to break up with him, I had to wait until Thursday to tell him in person. There seemed to be an inordinate number of deer carcasses along roadsides that week, one especially haunting, its ribcage visible, most of the flesh having been consumed by vultures. The red sinews of each meat-lined rib were seering, vibrant against the dreary wet winter afternoon. I slowed the car as I passed, mesmerized, torso aching in response: a world in which people slow down to stare at a creature splayed open, exposed, one second living, the next devoured.

Nicole Wilson is the author of the collection Supper & Repair Kit (The Lettered Streets Press) and is a graduate of the MFA Poetry Program at Columbia College Chicago.

Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson