Last of the Three Ravens
I hear people say things like,
“He kept one of his wings, that one,” and, “Too bad, he was only a child.”
My stepmother turned me into a bird. Knit me a shirt from stinging nettles. My arm got stuck going in and stuck coming out. A shirt full of points: when she said certain words, the points turned in, pierced me. Made my skin go from white to blue black. It became a softer texture. Like how a mummy must feel: bound and heavy.
Our sister couldn’t speak. Why couldn’t she write? No paper and no ink in the woods, I suppose. Mouth full of dirt for her; we had a mouth full of feathers, always preening, self-conscious. My brothers don’t remember so well. We stayed like ravens for three years, three months, three days. Three minutes early my sister called out and my black wing is the payment. Three minutes equals one arm on some distant scale.
But the wing’s good for pointing. Beckoning, come here.
When I was a raven the feathers grew in and out and I lost them and grew new ones, like hair. Now it’s the same five feathers forever.
Seeing the three of us walking together, a man said, “Here come the murder brothers.” But we’re not crows, we’re ravens. The solitary ones, but this time in a little group. Because we were not just ravens, we were ravens that used to be boys.
For buttoning up a coat, I have developed a system. The wing is very useful in brushing snow off windows. In the hottest part of summer, the feathers stick together, slick with moisture.
The hardest part: trying to hold someone with one arm and one wing.
Never feeling balanced. Always at a tilt: do you see how different I am?
Hearing the word anthropomorphic. Glancing down at my pieced together shadow.
“Does the wing still try to fly?” someone asks me.
“No, but when I see a black bird flying, it twitches.”
(originally appeared in Fast Forward: A Collection of Flash Fiction, Oct.,
2012
