As I drove to work the other morning, a vesper sparrow abruptly ejected from the upright and tall awnless brome grass along the highway. The bird flew parallel for only an instant before veering crosswise over the highway, nearly smashing into my windshield before whisking just overtop the cab of my truck. As I watched the near-hit sparrow suck away to a black point in my review mirror, the thought occurred to me that a better universe might be one in which birds never got struck by automobiles. Rather, if an ill-timed bird flew up in front of your car, the bird would flash right through the inside and exit again, unharmed, like a plane passing through a cloud or an arrow through a net. But then I realized my thoughts were far too small. For the rest of the drive to work, I imagined my wife and my grandparents and John’s wife and Kevin’s wife—I imagined all of those vanished and endangered people I know slipping through my truck unharmed, alive on both sides.
Grant me this, only this small change to the universe, and it shall be so.
--Mitchell Hegman
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