One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

by Olivia Hawker

People—men especially—hid their thoughts and their hearts behind thick, stoic walls, a dense blank-white nothingness, a silent room, a distant stare. Men hid what they couldn’t control till the burden of that featureless mask grew too much to bear, and then they threw it off and broke it with a shout or a swinging fist. Or a rifle shot at the riverside. Then they picked up the pieces of their unreadable disguise and fitted them back together and donned the mask again.

what needs doing can’t be stopped. 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.

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.

Each had taken up the truths they had trained themselves to see, drinking anger and hate or loneliness and despair as eagerly as the summer-parched prairie drank the rain. I ain’t fool enough to think I’m wise, exactly, but I have learned one scrap of wisdom, at least: whatever a body expects their life to be, that’s what they’ll make of it in the end.

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.