Although thousands of people drove that road, I had never seen anyone stop and admire these gardens, and I doubted that the dead man did either. We are all so caught up in the struggles we get into on the way to the lives we dream of, and the dead man was probably just a little farther down that road than the rest of us. Maybe he had lost a good woman, a good job, or a good friend, or maybe he’d never had them. Or maybe it was bad chemicals, of internal or external origin, that pushed him over the edge.

But maybe he was just suffering from the same regret we’ve all known at one point or another, when life hasn’t lived up to our expectations. Only his was worse, and perhaps his life lacked the sweet little mitigations that get most of us through our days: bandy-legged fawns on the lawn, a sweet song you hum looking out on a parking lot with a cigarette in your hand, peach-colored flowers against gray-green rock, the company of friends, children, and animals, and the terse exclamations of your fellows, which let you know you are the only one who suffers. Everything suffers. Everything has joy. In purgatory you still have a chance; the final judgment on you and everything else has not yet been rendered. So if people are doing something wrong, refuse to cooperate; if the music’s too sad, for God’s sake change the station or turn the radio off. Stop before the bridge. Get out. Walk down the road. Sniff the air, and if it smells good, breathe deep.

~ Jordan Fisher Smith, Nature Noir

Commenting is closed for this article.