I’d like to say, “I’ve buried a lot of animals in my time” but I know that’s not true. The number of actual burials I attended and doted over is a shallow number, and most of them were the dead birds that I happened upon in my yard.

Though, there once was a hawk.

A big red one, face up , lying by the neighbor’s rosebush. He must’ve went out by the precarious power lines that surround the suburbs, because I saw no outside wounds. No maggoty flesh. No eye sockets full of empty. I did what every human does at the sight of a dead body; poke it with a slender object, preferably a stick. I moved its feathers around, daring it to wake up. He laid there, no longer bemused by my singular understanding of life and death. I had to wait for the animal society to cart him away, because ‘possession of a migratory bird’ is ill-eagle due to the The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.

See what I did there?

Though I suppose he was a hawk.

Not an eagle.

I still held a mock-burial for him. For funsies.

I do it not to cry. What a selfish reason for a burial. I hate crying. I’m crying right now. I hate how I can tell it’s coming. There’s a lump I think I can punch out of my throat. It’s like pride; hard to swallow. Something slaps me in the back of my face. Burning, then the water is painfully squeezed from my dry eyes. My mind wrings out my anguish like a dishcloth. It gets back every drop. The towel is damp, and laid out to dry.

Do I sound like an absolute tool yet.

It’s-It’s-It’s. It’s it’s dude. Lemme tell you about the its. The it’s is the feeling you get when you know that you’re gonna die. That this experience is going to end, sooner than later. The it’s is when you know that everything else will die too, much sooner than later, at least for you anyway. It’s a feeling of a never ending piece of multi-colored yarn, turning forever in the place where rib cage meets abdomen.

The first time I got the it’s was in the blue ford on the way back from Baker’s square. I was 8 and asking questions that every kid asks eventually. Death sat just an inch away. I longed to touch something alive, something to tell me that I’m not dying right now. For now. I thought of my half- blind cat zorro (do you need to ask at this point if he’s dead?). I imagined squeezing him and feeling the struggle of uncomfortableness, reminding the both of us that we were alive in this moment.

I cry because animals don’t know about the it’s. If they do, the don’t let it on very well. I cry because even though these guys love me, they’re gonna have to leave at some point. Permanently. Call me sensitive. I love animals, and i have little doubt that they love me.

Or at least feel some primitive source of admiration.