An Enchantment of Ravens

by Margaret Rogerson

They looked like a pair of cupids who had decided they liked shooting people with real arrows better. They were horrible. I loved them so much.

After he left, I couldn’t shake the notion that he’d insisted on ravens for a reason. I was almost finished cleaning up by the time the explanation occurred to me. My cheeks warmed, and a wistful pang plucked a sweet, sad chord in my stomach. It was simple, really. He didn’t want me to forget him once he’d gone.

Our worlds are small, our lives are short, and we can only bleed a little before we fall.

Frankly, I had no idea how anyone knew if they were in love in the first place. Was there ever a single thread a person could pick out from the knot and say “Yes—I am in love—here’s the proof!” or was it always caught up in a wretched tangle of ifs and buts and maybes?

This was a look that would make time stop, if it could. Soft and sharp at once, an aching tenderness edged with sorrow, naked proof of a heart already broken. Here I stood in a dragonfly dress, holding his arm, and he knew our time was almost over.

Why do we desire, above all other things, that which has the greatest power to destroy us?”

“You are like a living rose among wax flowers. We may last forever, but you bloom brighter and smell sweeter, and draw blood with your thorns.”

I love you wholly. I love you eternally. I love you so dearly it frightens me. I fear I could not live without you. I could see your face every morning upon waking for ten thousand years and still look forward to the next as though it were the first.”