I cycle up the valley. The sun has set, but there is still plenty of light to see by.
The sky is a crystal sort of blue with white gauze over the shining half-pearl of the moon. Where the road is still to the north of the water, a deer.
I’m sure its corpse has barely been here a fortnight.
A small row of brilliant teeth are aligned on a shape now a flat mask of the creature’s head. Empty circle where an eye was. Hard bone crushed and gone. Hooves shiny black reach out toward the water, the most in-tact part must be the least appetising, the most robust bits. Hide, chestnut brown and hairy, maps a shape laid out by the scavengers and vehicles passing over, half a spine in the centre, sections of it scattered uphill from here.
At the gates of the cemetery sit two shining packages. Sainsbury’s Orange gleams bright as I approach wondering what strange roadworks may be afoot.
There are no roadworks.
The twin receptacles harbour cardboard and bottles, a disposable barbecue, all visible from the road. I think I despise the litterers more for doing it here beside (probably) consecrated ground, and somehow also for only doing half the job, as if they think the first half shows they tried, and negates the fact that in not doing the second half they needn’t have bothered.
Make it look neat, tidy it up. Better scattered by the riverbank, or bagged up by the iron gates? What does it matter, because it means the same. Mark our territory with your detritus, stake a claim that will last for centuries. The dead feed the insects and the trash feeds the dead, covers them over, fill in the gaps. Fill the world up to prove I was here, I did, I’ve done…
wait, that’s a Beyoncé song…
Jessie x
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Jessie Growden 