By Nina Gaby

City Crows wait on a tree branch inches from your window. Huge and impatient, their shadows surprise you. They screech out the news with breath so powerful you can almost taste it and then they swoop down as a flock (a murder!) on the rat dead in the street, pulling it inches this way and that and they don’t give a fuck about the traffic or the cat on the curb. And when they are done, they are done. You recall the Country Crows, how they lingered a hundred feet up in the tallest locusts, conversing politely for hours with their friends in the “Upper 6” and over on The Ridge. Rarely did they drop down to land. If you sat quietly enough–up high on the bench at the edge of the milkweed, if the dog was asleep at your feet–one might swoop feigning disinterest and then float away. The City Crows don’t float. They pound through the space between buildings on their way to the heat in the middle of the city. As you can see, I’m trying to make a comparison work here but it’s clumsy so I’ll just leave it as an observation. As much as I was a Country Crow, or at least did my best, circumstances have changed. My heart feels vast, breaking somewhere between pounding and floating.

Nina Gaby is a writer, visual artist and psychiatric nurse practitioner. Gaby’s essays and articles have been published in numerous anthologies, journals and magazines. Her artwork is held in various collections, including the Smithsonian, Arizona State University and Rochester Institute of Technology. She wears a cast silver raven talon with a very sharp point–an amulet through these times. More at ninagaby.wordpress.com