One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

by Olivia Hawker

Clyde was one who did what needed doing, even when grief sought to drown him. And I labored beside him in the cornfield because I was like he was—just as he was like the corn—ready to be twisted free of my cob and dream through the dark of winter, ready to rise up green and new to a life that was my own.

What needs doing cannot be stopped. When the shears

thought, If I am ever a father someday, I won’t be a father like you.

Cora did not look back the way she had come. She already felt weak and isolated—insignificant. No good would come from proving her fears well founded.

My mother expected her life to be difficult, bordering on unbearable, and so it was.

A dull ache had settled into her neck and back, the cost of hanging her head in shame day in and day out.

Prayer and hope were the only paltry treasures at her disposal—small and fragile things, levers inadequate to shift a man’s fate.

Children were a persistent reminder that life went ever onward, that a future lay ahead, for them if not for you.

she had hoped to find comfort in recalling her dead husband, that hope proved to be in vain.

But the quiet was so welcome that Cora never minded the ghosts.

Let joy run out of me. Let it soak the barren ground of this house—my home—and let something new and bright grow up from the field of my past bitterness.