The Crow

The crow pecks at the window three times, and I toss and turn to the other side, hoping to open my eyes to find you knocking. But a tear slips out when I see, just the sky, just the birds — as if that alone is supposed to satisfy the ravenous hunger I carry for seeing you again. 

A crow

I sit by the window, in the same room where we once spoke our sacred language, how we first understood each other. Your hands in my hair, your laughter resting on my neck, sinking your teeth into all that was me, like there was more behind the flesh.  

Now my fingers tremble at the memories, and I stare at the phone, hoping you might call—thinking, at the very least, of another way to say goodbye. Maybe I can just keep saying it, over and over again, just to hear that shallow sound of your breath, the timbre of your voice as you hope to see me again... over and over again.  

But my fingers hover over the cords of the telephone line. I said goodbye in every language left. I learned all the ways to keep running back, until there was nothing left. This malady inside me is ferociously drifting, from the freckles to the fingers, to the nerves... and all I can remember is wanting you. All I can remember is being with you. 

I look away.  

The phone line breaks. 

I see your smile against the window glass. I was hoping the phone would ring, but I was ever the only one holding the line, ever the only one running back, rewriting my name into the chapters when they came to an end. Ever the one... trying. 

But you... you live so easily.  

The characters come and go. You had once said esoterically, and I was envious of your acceptance that things just come and go. I imagined you would resist... that we wouldn’t go.

But you scribbled away anyway — new characters, things come and go: the wind, the seasons, life... me... 

But I never let you leave me... Not at least in a way I could finger. You stayed, yet you were gone. Hiding behind the walls, hiding through the memories like you weren’t really gone, but you were here. Just in memory, in nostalgia, in longing, and in all the ways I could still reach you. 

Sooner, I wished I could find a new place to call home. Repaint the walls, keep on writing, but everything stopped once you walked out the door. I was living, in a sense, through the only thing I had left, your memory. 

The crow pecks the window, and I hope it comes with a letter—a severance for all the pain you left behind. It pecks three times and stares into me. 

‘Wake up!’ It cries and flits away.