Roadkill

I was on my way to work this morning, when I saw you lying in the road. Stretched across the yellow lines, you lay there exposed to the weather that has so thoroughly beleaguered Georgia and Tennessee. But instead of paws or a furry countenance sticking up vulnerably into the air, frozen by rigor mortis, pages fluttered lifelessly. No lifeblood dried stickily on the tarmac, but words and occasionally sentences spilled out into the road. I speculated - were you chased onto treacherous Ochs Highway by some literary critic who runs with the coyotes of Lookout Mountain? The hunt is over, at least for you.

Now the dark silhouettes of students circling in the sky herald your disembowelment. One lands, and greedily snaps up a few quotes out of context to be taken back to its young paper, to whom they will be fed without correct citation.