ritual cleansing

Late afternoon is a strange time for a shower. Nonetheless, I found myself in the shower around 4 pm this afternoon. Standing under the hot water in my unfortunately shared dorm room, I contemplated how strange it was that I needed to come home and shower. I had this uncontrollable need to come home and shower-- to wash off what had just happened, to wash away the reality that was the death of another creature, and how its death so closely touched me. Literally.

This bird. A dying injured bird, got up from the road, next to the bus stop. This bus stop is very busy as it is next to this major state university in which presumably hundreds of people stand throughout the day, perhaps even thousands. This dying bird got up from the road, off-balance and weak and then flew directly into me. I tried to avoid it, but it flew directly into my leg. And I don't know what I could have done to avoid it.

The bird flew directly into my leg and then fell to the ground slightly the right of my body, and then the same thing happened it tried to fly away again, it fell to the ground again.

Later that day but not too much later maybe 30 minutes later I was walking back home and I saw a bird, (I don't know if it was the same bird or not, but I think it might have been) on the side of the road by the curb, dead and squashed by the tire of a car.