Nick Bertelson

We returned from the trip to find a dead fawn in the front yard,
our headlights sweeping across the grass, spooking the mother
back to the timber. My wife made me go look at this dead thing.
I didn’t know what I was looking for. It was twisted, crumpled,
all legs. These little white eyes on its fur stared up unblinking, while
its real eyes were cinched tight, having never glimpsed the world.
I put on gloves and slipped the body into a trash bag, then unpacked
the car, starting with my snoring son. At daybreak, I took the fawn
to a nearby bridge. The Missouri River had swelled with snowmelt.
The waters roiled with tallowy spume stretching for miles. I let the fawn
fall from the bridge. Its white underbelly flashed once midair before
hitting the water. It floated downstream, then disappeared. My son
was still asleep when I returned home, and when he woke, he pointed
to the doe in the yard, alone. To him, nothing was missing.

Bio

Nick Bertelson is an award-winning poet and fiction writer whose work appears in Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, North American Review, and Wigleaf. He is the author of the novel “Eighty-Sixed from Paradise” (Handcar Press 2025). Currently, he serves as a staff reader for New England Review.