Some species mate, then decapitate.Some frogs never reproduce the sameplace twice. Some species film withfancy cameras their fucking. My fathersaid my mother requested one nightto be whipped by strangers. No specieslack pleasure receptors in their ears.Some bees use sex as revenge, someas memory. Fell ponies never uncouple.Some sharks orgasm with their eyesso can never trust their seeing. My fathersaid I can’t do it, sent my brother insidethe porn store to buy what my motherwanted. Some call out to a god, othersto excrement. I am not making equivalencies.Finches sing to seduce. Ornithologiststheorize the same song also eulogizesif produced in a tree hollow. That this isnot the saddest fact in all of zoology iszoology’s saddest fact. Unprompted,my mother told me she loved my fatherlike a brother. Some mate for safety, to avoidsadness, to self-flagellate. Some say there,there as if pushing on a bruise. Afterher affairs, my father forgave his wife.For all species, desire is the most boringverb, yet they connive for it most hours.Some species of snake copulate in hopesthey are another species altogether. Grunionbury their spawn in sand. My mother saidshe would have aborted me, but the clinicwas closed. When whales abandon a grievingmother, she does not find kindness again.Some lives are taken down to salt, some to water.Some species invent facts about the livingto explain the dead. I cannot fathom the bonesI find in the woods posed themselves like this,though some species of grief find meaningin minutia, a mechanism for survival. It is hardto imagine a face for each skull.