Feathers splay out across tar in a gory pattern, shadowed by the dying pine looming just above help the pavement, and I can't help but look at the dull, brown bird and think:
"Weak."
Because is that not what life is? If the point of living is living and living is just surviving then our purpose—our only chance of mattering—in life is to survive, is it not? To experience the inimitability that is human life, no matter how miserable? To learn all that there is to learn and see all there is to see because against all odds, one of the deepest human desires is to sate the void—the black hole—that is curiosity.
I reach out to pluck a fruit from the tree, red and spiky and bitter and... small. So very small.
If the bird had not died, rosy guts still splattered against black tar, would this fruit have been its next meal? Maybe not, for red screams danger and bitterness: poison. Perhaps it would have survived.
The fruit makes a satisfying splash as it hits never-ending water.
It never would have mattered, for the human has no fear of the color red.
