"I Began to Notice" by Jordyn Fitch

I began to notice 

I began to notice the trees

I began to notice the trees and the frost on sloping hills and I learned I needed to pump the brakes and pump the brakes to avoid skidding off the road and into their snowy embrace.

I began to notice the trees and the frost and the scary sloping hills and the one way roads without street lights as I cruised through the dark abyss, eyes flicking up and down and back and forth as I checked the location of my wife on my phone, wondering if she made it home safe. Was she alive?  Or would I have to drive around on this dark lonely road until I found her lifeless, beaten body discarded in a frost covered ravine? 

I began to notice the trees and the frost and the scary sloping hills and the dark, dank one way roads and the pick up trucks with thin blue lines that would beam me into oblivion with their high beams as they speed around and past me too quickly to notice I could barely see the road through my tears. 

I began to notice how often I think about death. Dying. I am dying. I am dying here in this place. I am afraid and unsafe and perhaps I am already gone. Will this be the day my body swallows AR bullets at the queer dance night at Babes Bar? Will today be the day I rush my whole world to the ER with oozing, gaping wounds imbued by a stranger with fists full of hatred? Fists and kicks and punches and lunges full of the politicized rhetoric gleaned from endless news cycles where our bodies– freed of the binary, are their favourite subject. Their dirty little obsession.

I can’t help but notice the trees and the frost and the scary sloping hills and the pumping of the brakes and how awful it feels to live in this idyllic northeast kingdom.

— This piece is dedicated to Nex Benedict 2008-2024