The Steel Crow
I’d been sick for a few days. Flu-like symptoms, but not the full-blown magilla. I was weakened, and slept a lot.
Lying on the couch, mid-afternoon, drifting along in half-sleep, one arm under my head, the other covering my left eye and shielding my right, I heard a slow-beat scritch-scritch-scritching.
I cracked my eyelid to investigate. A steel-gray, metal crow stared back at me through outstretched wing feathers, scritching them across a hardwood floor that did not exist in my house.
‘Eat the yogurt,’ he said. I said I would.
Gazing at each other, I was amused to realize that he was mirroring my own posture. I started to drift back into sleep, but before I could, he said, ‘Eat the yogurt now.’
‘Ok,’ I said. I forced myself up, got the lone yogurt from the fridge, and ate it.
I felt better.
Steel crow sculpture by Russ Lamb.