By Angela Schmidt
Thank you for giving me blood stained highways, leaving Nashville on I-24 to Kentucky; deer intestines and brains inching outward. Slowly, coldly; a dreadful almost silence in triumph as they make their last escape.
Free.
Souls rising in the sharp November air from what used to hold the head of the animal, any animal, which is soon to become the new roadside maggot market’s feast.
Thank you for giving me cars along the side of the road, past Land Between the Lakes onward to Dover, with shattered windshields and smashed up front ends that have met in absolute terror the stumbling force of Nature.
You make me realize how much I have left to love.
Thank you for giving me Buffalo herds and Lake Barkley. And seeing row after row of my last name on cold grey headstones.
You make me think it’s ok to bring children into this world.
Thank you for giving me bridges back and forth, between Fact and Truth. Love and Hate; gluttonous Mortality.
I thank God when Thanksgiving is over.