“They sacrifice their own reality with things that aren’t aligned with themselves because they don’t know.” – Maya McClean

“Roadkill”

Fiction. Based a True Therapy Session.

By Nikki Wicz

This journal entry is inspired by true events. Some of the characters, names, businesses, incidents, and certain locations and events have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely coincidental and unintentional

Listening to a depressed soul
Is like pressing a stethoscope
To roadkill. 

There may have been 
A heart beat once, but
It’s been lost under the 
Tread of a jeep some
Hundred miles ago. 

I’ve laid in silence 
Enough to know that
A depressed soul is a 
Animate ghost, only moaning, 

And so I’ve eaten and slept 
In an attempt to satiate it, 
But instead I grew reliant
On exorbitance. 

When it finally sent
Me a desire, like a fax
That got stuck in the network, 
I was too tired to obey. 

I had convinced myself
That self-reliance was a sign
Of strength, and asking for help
Would earn me only scoffs. 

I managed, finally, 
To unzip my mouth
And unfurl my tongue
With a letter etched 
Into the bumpy, rough
Skin, 

And when I let someone
Read me, they offered me 
All that I needed because
They didn’t think scraping 
Me up off the road was too much 
To ask for. They were the driver
That saw me still breathing
On the shoulder, and 
Pumped my chest to the beat
Of their own.

Because, somehow, 
They saw purpose in my 
Broken bones. A purpose
I thought was lost to the 
Burning cement under 
The time- scorched sun.