When I turned onto Whittier Street from Willoughby, I could see a black something in the street just beyond the parking lot entrance. Ravens were perched all around on the light poles, looking at it. Many ravens. But they weren’t noisy. The black thing looked like a dead raven.
I parked and walked over to inspect it. It was dead. It seemed not right to leave it there, dead, exposed in the street, with no dignity. I went back to my car for a bag, a vegetable bag filled with candy for the office, dumped the candy out on the seat, and returned to the raven.
I negotiated the dead raven into the plastic bag, which was small for the task. There were red flecks of fresh blood on its black body. Its head was bent completely beneath it. Its body was loose; it had just died.
A man beside me on the sidewalk asked if he could help while I stooped there trying to slide the raven into the bag. I said I thought I had it. He asked if I needed a bigger bag. He asked it again, saying that he had a bigger bag in the car. I got the raven into the bag and stood up with it and looked at him. He was balding and slender; genuine, concerned.
I said, “The poor baby,” and said that the bag would do. “Poor baby.”
I carried it through the parking lot toward my office building, but there was no outdoor garbage can and I didn’t want to bring the raven inside. I walked over to the dumpster by the next building, opened the lid, and slid it to the bottom down the slanted front.
I looked up at the top of the building and the light poles. The ravens had followed us.
This Writers’ Weir piece was originally published in the Empire’s sister publication, the Capital City Weekly. The CCW accepts poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction submissions for Writers’ Weir on a rolling basis and will publish them as space and competition allows. Send a submission to editor@capweek.com.
