had logo

If you hit a moose, it’s like going under the trailer of an eighteen-wheeler. Every year, four hundred people don’t see them cross the outer reaches of I95 until it’s too late. Sometimes, when you’re night driving, I practice getting the call. It’s like when I found the lump: before we knew anything about it except that it was there and that, in some cases, it could kill people. As my finger circled the raised flesh just on the swell of my left breast, I thought about how I’d never touched a moose. I wondered if they felt like the shag carpet in my mother’s living room and you thought they’d be rough and matted. I’ll bet tomorrow’s dishes on it, I said. The bedroom felt close that night, especially the oak dresser, so I went outside and stood at the edge of the thicket behind our house, staring down the dark, and it wasn’t until morning that I came back and kissed your forehead crease and, when you asked me if I saw one I lied and said I did and it was bigger than I thought and you were shocked that we even had one back there. That I saw it without you and that singularity was the sort of thing both of us needed to get used to. All the same, I promised that next time I’d call you, but we both knew you kept your phone on silent and, if I yelled, it might have charged or worse, done nothing at all. That’s the thing with moose, I said, they’re unpredictable. You don’t know if they’re in the woods or not. If they’ll cross the highway or not. There’s just the chance of chest pressure and shattered glass and there’s nothing you can do but drive.