One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

by Olivia Hawker

The seasons don’t cease to change because we haven’t the time to plant or tend or harvest, because grief like a hailstorm comes up sudden and frightens us with its noise. Once the storm rolls on, the fields remain, and life goes on, whatever we prefer.

So that’s why you were always so mean and hard, I said to Substance. That’s why you hurt Clyde, and Nettie Mae, too. You wanted to make him stronger. You wanted them both to be strong. But you know now, don’t you? You know you treated them rotten all those years. You were afraid for them, Substance—afraid you would lose them both and be left with nothing, no family at all. So you hardened yourself and hoped the fear couldn’t touch you. But once you’ve turned yourself to stone, love can’t reach you, either.

That was the nature of children, Nettie Mae supposed—they instilled a rising hope in even the hardest of hearts. Children were a persistent reminder that life went ever onward, that a future lay ahead, for them if not for you. Perhaps Nettie Mae needed that remembrance now, when everything else had been taken from her.

God is said to be great, the worm told me, so great you cannot see Him. But God is small, with hands like threads, and they reach for you everywhere you go. The hands touch everything—even you, even me. What falls never falls; what grows has grown a thousand times, and will live a thousand times more. Wherever hand touches hand, the Oneness comes to stay. Once God has made a thing whole, it cannot be broken again.