Highway of Love

 

By John RC Potter

Black heap. Dark. Bleeding.

A prisoner of the car’s headlights.

I closed my eyes to shut out that image.

Forcing the memory to fade away into a blackout.

 

I saw a raccoon lying on the side of the road last night

on his back, freshly dead, his paws raised in supplication;

he reminded me of me:

but can the dead still be moved through manipulation?

 

Water drops. Opaque. Streaming.

Rivulets across the car’s windscreen.

I opened my eyes to be able to see clearer.

But the memories came back like a relentless waterfall.

 

Whenever I see raccoons lying dead on the road,

they remind me of all those who have loved and lost:

dead and dying hearts on this endless highway of love,

whose owners took a chance but at quite a high cost. 

 

Road hard. Inky. Winding.

The wheels of the car turning over endlessly.

I rubbed my eyes to clear the cobwebs.

Then forgetting to swerve to miss the roadkill.

 

I saw a raccoon dying on the side of the road last night

on his back, still alive, wondering what had happened to him;

he reminded me of me:

just a heap on the highway of love as the light grows dim. 

 

About the Author:

John RC Potter is an international educator from Canada, living in Istanbul. His poems, stories, essays, and reviews have been published in a range of magazines and journals, most recently in Blank Spaces, (“In Search of Alice Munro”, June 2023), Literary Yard (“She Got What She Deserved”, June 2023), Freedom Fiction (“The Mystery of the Dead-as-a-Doornail Author”, July 2023), and The Serulian (“The Memory Box”, September 2023). The author has over a dozen upcoming publications in the coming months, including an essay in The Montreal Review. His story, “Ruth’s World” (Fiction on the Web, March 2023) has recently been nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize. More details about the poet can be found here: