Andrew Riutta

Despair Again

Yesterday while driving close to sunset, I hit an already dead gray squirrel that was in the road and, despite Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 on the radio, could so profoundly hear and feel its bones being obliterated even further between the blacktop and tire, as though they were little more than brittle pieces of shale. This was only a short while after an old friend I’d been chatting with at the library told me that her husband would likely have to have his foot amputated due to a terribly infected wound. And that his mind had as of late become a dark bog of ill cognition and dangerous incomprehension. So, I turned down the music and went directly into my mantra:

“Nothing can be done about anything nothing can be done 
about anything nothing can be done about anything nothing 
can be done about anything nothing can be done about 
anything nothing can be done about anything nothing 
can be done about anything . . . 
Nothing can be done.”

And then I flicked my cigarette out the window.

autumn fog—
on a bookstore clearance rack,
camouflage Bibles

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About the Author

Andrew Riutta was born and raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He is a father, chef, and Zamboni operator. His essay “The Myths of Manhood,” from the collection This I Believe: On Fatherhood (Jossey-Bass), was featured on Public Radio International’s Bob Edwards Show in 20. His latest book is Blessed: Modern Haibun on Almost Every Despair (Red Moon Press, 2022).