this crooked line @rune0wl - Tumblr Blog

I’m confronted by the trolley problem again.

A flutter in the grass beside one of the barn cats gives me pause - I step out of the van, and take a few steps to peer under the truck. The barn cat looks on impassively, in a lazy crouch just inches from its victim.

A beautiful little grey bird flaps feebly against the dirt, gasping, and I gently pick it up and cradle it in my palm. It’s soft and warm and trembling, a bleeding puncture wound to its lower abdomen. Its beak opens and closes, futilely, in little gasps. I feel sick, a deep well of anger bubbling to the surface - in that moment, I genuinely hated this stupid, horrible, beloved calico.

I wonder if this is what God feels like, when men kill each other.

I snap its neck with a quick motion, and the trembling stops. I set the thing down on the grass a few paces away, and drive home, with literal blood on my hands, angry tears streaming down my cheeks, wondering if the owner of the barn saw what I’d done from the bedroom window.

“It’s like the trolly problem.”

I think to myself, pouring milk into a glass mason jar, watching a half-dead moth flutter up the side of the barn wall.

The moth is flapping frantically, having almost reached a small ledge in the uneven wall. Does it know the ledge is there, or is it climbing blindly?

I remember a photo I’d stumbled across on Facebook days before. A woman didn’t know what to do with an injured rabbit she’d found hit by a car, and wrote that she “didn’t have the heart” to end its life. It was pictured in a small box, leg bones visible through matted fur, eyes glassy. I was certain that, were it capable, it would have wished she’d had the ‘heart’ to end its life, instead of setting it (carefully, lovingly) in its little cardboard coffin. I would want someone to kill me, if I were the rabbit. I wonder how rabbits perceive death. I wonder what it would feel like to be an animal, what their little thoughts feel like inside of their head. My thoughts are jumbled, uncoordinated, manic, like the fluttering moth.

Can an overabundance of kindness be cowardice?

Does reducing harm mean causing harm, sometimes? Does making someone else do it for you, giving them the burden of harm, make you weak, or does it make you achingly, pathetically kind?

“Shit.”

The jar overfills, bleeding warm milk onto the concrete floor, and my back twinges painfully as I mechanically replace the glass and toss paper towels onto the small river under my heavy boots.

I look back up towards the moth, but it’s gone. The little ledge, too, is empty. I’m too much of a coward apathetic to look down to see if it had fallen, finally dead, onto the floor. I stare at the empty spot on the wall for a long moment, mind blank. I don’t wonder what happened to it any more.

But I do hope it didn’t suffer.