Crows

It came from all directions, the understanding of how the years would come to be. I felt it coming from the sky, cracking down hard on the asphalt, I felt it pushing up hard from the earth.

From then on I would dream about the spearhead I’d found while camping in the Wallowas, black and shiny and triangular shaped. That spearhead that I’d never shown him I’d found. I’d wanted to keep it to myself.

In that dream I would search for a place to hide it, the spearhead, and the only one safe was under my ribs, its point nearly touching my heart.

It’s how the years would come to be.

I waited on the porch. On the last night, the night he brought our baby back home, right before dusk there was a resonance that filled my ears, a rackety swoosh overhead, and I looked up to see the crows come, caught a glimpse of their black mass before they settled, nervously anchoring themselves to the branches of a tremendously large tree at the dark, empty house next door. The big tree shuddered, and then it was still.