It is four thirty in the morning and I am holding hands with spring time. Robert Frost is a marble in my mouth and May is a fickle month, unamused today, peeking out in between clouds but never reaching out to stroke our hair.
I am walking with a boy named Jack; he has spikes on his jacket like a stegosaurus and when he exhales, his breath comes out like a dragon’s cigarette.
We are not talking. I am still in my pajamas. I am not tired but still dreaming. I wonder if this is the feeling other people seek through medicines.
The boy named Jack touches my elbow with one finger like he is testing my temperature. I look at him pointing to a crow with a guitar finger.
The crow has a puppet’s head. It cries with a gutter sound and spreads its wings. Each feather is a different shade of black.
The boy named Jack puts his hands in his pockets and starts walking away. The crow opens its beak, pink and ugly, and screams after him. It jerks its head to me and seems to be pleading. I walk after the boy named Jack. The crow follows us.
Jack tells me the sun will be punching through the clouds soon and we can pick up the pieces if we reach the top. There are wet leaves plastered to our shoes. The air smells like moss; my lungs are growing mold from breathing in and out. The boy Jack does not look like a leaky dragon anymore. He is on a mission. Almost smiling.
The crow is at the top already, waiting for us. I wonder if all the trees smell like maple and newborn babies. I can feel May. She is shy, hiding, leaving the fringes of her cold shoulder on crumbling logs. We try to reach her. I look for weeds and buds. I forgot how damp the springtime is. I wonder if she is crying because her sister December has died.
Run run run, says Jack. His arms are up and forward. He is trying to hug the sky. He is standing on top of a cragged rock and I’m trying to run and I wonder if he will dive out onto the trees just so he can haunt this forest.
There she is, May’s lovely face peering up from the hills. Is it safe?
Yes, we tell her, the boy Jack and me with our hands up. She is the only god that matters. Yes, it is safe now. Come. Hurry. We’ve been waiting for so long.
Tess Walsh is currently pursing an English degree at Saint Michael’s College in Vermont. She has a birthmark shaped like a turtle and believes in ghosts even though she has never seen one. She blogs at misstesswalsh.wordpress.com and is on tumblr as icedcoffeeowls.
