today, about 15 hours after reading Kristen Roupenian's "Cat Person"

A few blocks outside of downtown, there is this pretty trashed, rundown house that is painted a very bright pink with purple trim. The yard is a back and forth of chalky shell rock and cat litter, the kind of yard that absorbs motor oil from all the piecemeal cars propped on blocks. 

In this yard is a red picnic table, weather beaten but not unstable, it would seem, because on the red picnic table is a giant, dead deer. Right out front. Right close to the stop light. No flourish. No care, not even a tarp to cover the corpse.