Like the birds we do not see these days, we are few and far between. Like the fish we do not eat, my lips are bleeding. Our windshields wear nothing, breaking no wind. Where once we saw hawks, we now see empty thermals. In every city you can pick us out, like Perrier bottles and biodegradable bags: pigeons are just loveless doves, rats are just hungry children. Where once the skies turned black with flapping, now we have nothing but sun. Upon this sun we drew our prairie; into this sun we disappeared.
I should have liked to see this thing myself one day, this quiet wild lost to time. I see the world but once at a time these days, and once time is over. Once is not enough for anyone. I once saw a single bird fall out of a tree. The leaves shuffled, but stayed where they were. I called to it; it went unanswered. In the past, they called this nature. Today we call it inevitable. I once dreamed I ate a field of grass. I blew up like a cloud, and from my open mouth came rain. And like the fish who can not feel pain, who feel excruciating pain, we do not feel the rain. Like the bugs that do not paint our windshields, we will not be easy to miss. I have hated us once; I will miss us again.