![]() I find I am angry, angry with the crow, and angry with the world that is so very, very cold just now. I ask the crow if knows about thin ice, about breaking. My questions grow louder, impassioned, quiet inquiries descending into an intense interrogation. I ask him why he is out in a storm, about what sent him. I don’t know for certain.Īnd then, whether because I want to know or because I don’t know what to do, I ask the crow about his purpose, his secret intelligence. There is animosity in the air, I think, but maybe not in him. He calls, a loud, long awe that carries something across rooftops. The thought pulls my gaze back to the crow’s perch and he is there again, staring again. Lightening cracks the sky again, not so far away, and an identical fork copies it in the distance. Or perhaps there is nothing here but a strange encounter in a strange world. Perhaps we are both hiding in storms tonight. Does he feel it too? Perhaps he is tricking me, trapping me. I should get off this roof, should climb back through the window. I shift, intending to move to the other side the roof, to find him again, but a sweep of wind scatters hailstones in my face. My gaze traces the outlines of the rooftops, seeking but not finding. Hiding, lost, spying maybe? It shouldn’t matter. The biting rainwater dripping down my back melds with something deeper, some knowing. That, too, is frightening, though I can’t say why. I see sheets of clouds and shivering hailstone, now growing larger, colder. Thunder tumbles somewhere behind, and I turn instinctually, as if I’ll glimpse the violence of the screaming heavens. There is animosity in the air today, I think, in storms above, storms below. I can’t tell if my fear is from him, exactly, or if it’s a part of me, or if it has formed somewhere between us, in the shared gaze that knots us in a moment of uncertain recognition. Hailstones tumble from the sky, dusting rooftops, tremoring on the shingles before melting away. He shifts his beak up slightly-a sign of acknowledgement, maybe, or arrogance. A crow, perched on a roof-peak, is staring at me. I sink into myself as I notice a feathery figure a few houses down. My neck pivots and chilled water slips down my spine. Something harsh and nasal breaks raindrop patter. It was an impulsive, reckless, necessary decision to climb out that window. I pull my knees to my chest, wincing as my bare legs grade against the gravel of asphalt shingles. But when lightening cracks the sky and the rain begins, it’s cold and hard, and it’s harder to believe that I like the rain. ![]() And not something I want to think about right now, so I tell myself that I like the rain. But knowing how long the break will take, how long you have to get away, to get out-that’s not something I’ve learned yet. I know about thin ice: I know it always breaks. It’s frigid and fragile, filled with a chill of inevitability, a tense tranquility that’s breaking under the promise of a late-fall storm. I watch the horizon grow murky with cloud cover, and I tell myself that I’m waiting for the storm. I tell myself that these are the reasons why I climbed from the upstairs bedroom window, why I hide in rooftop shadows where shingled slopes meet. I tell myself that storms intrigue me, that I have my best thoughts amid thunder.
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