as straight as the crow flies

Dark, wounded, crow sat on the rooftop, alone at last, above the world, his mind slowly turning, glistening with dark thoughts. Nothing is nothing. And nothing brings peace.

From a distance he spied her beyond the window. Sees her clearly. Surrounded by people, engaged in glittering conversation, her head tossed back now and then in convulsions of laughter, her image in the mirror like a painting; the clinking of ice, the crackling of fires, the sparkling, illumined world of humans with its light bouncing off objects, spreading fan-like through green glass; the warmth of human fellowship, the solidarity of being, of two-ness. The rich, luxurious patterned life, a life that is woven from repose and joy and deep still moments...all this was like something out of a story for Crow.

Crow. Above the world, alone at last. Spiked existence, nothing like the angular mind of the humans. Crow, God's failure, felt the warmth of his own body against the bitingly cold northern wind for a while. Then some ice fell into his eye, like a shard of glass, or stinging grey ashes.

Age after age, generation after generation, carrion-crows had survived on the morsels of the one thing necessary. A single thought and sharpened insight had seen them through the passing seasons, the thawing of the great seas, the migrations from warmer climes to the barbarian lands. But now existence was sinking into essence, his silver-pointed words inheriting the black, the summer-gold of his heart fading the more he remembered. Tongue-twisted, he would remain silent, speechless. The frenzy of a chaotic mind, the soul wandering through the endless night, the blueness that leads to blindness. He sees his lifeless shadow on the snow, like a discarded kite, paler and uglier than he imagined, and he thinks to himself: I am not me. I am another.