The Crow
by Dania Jamal
I am waiting at the bus stop. I am allowed be nervous, I say; there is hope to meet.
I try to distract myself with the people around me. There is a father waiting with his daughter. He is playful and she is nervous as I. It looks like something my father pretends to have done with me or it looks like something my father did when I was young and I can’t remember. The little girl will dream big. She will try not to dream too far. But at the end she won’t help it. She is a little bird in a nest. Her father wants to push her out, off the road. I catch myself before jumping to save her. How could he do something like that?
The bird is beautiful. My bird is intelligent, collects silver and anything that glimmers. I keep it for when I need it. It keeps me company instead of a conversation.
In the glass turned mirror by the poster on the other side, I am reflected a crow. I lower my head down in shame. I put no call. I don’t act the omen. Let the girl live. Let her dream. I turn to the other side. There is an older woman, hunched back with small eyes. She is no longer beautiful. She no longer needs to be. This is a relief.
Does she get lots of visitors? Is she loved? Had she done enough? She looks lost, all alone. Perhaps she saved herself. Perhaps she saved others. Maybe that is where all of her strength went. Maybe her lips withered out by kisses. Her cheeks hollowed from smiling. Her legs weakened by dancing. I have to save myself. When I am her age, I won’t be alone in a bus stop, I will save my kisses to still have my lips. I won’t move my hips. You can’t know what the future hides. Perhaps for the better.
I want to see her cry. I want to console her and unveil her secrets. I want to know if it is worth it to become like this. I want to know where she wasted it. I want to know better. But I will save it.
I turn my head away from her; she started smiling happily and joking with some kid.
Me, on the other hand. I will save it.
I look back at the blackened mirror. I am a crow again
Dania is a middle-eastern woman. She always enjoyed crafting stories and writing since she can remember. Her poem, I always prefer the future to the present has been recently published in Vita and the Woolf literary journal and was featured on the online magazine The Raven’s Muse for the third issue
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “xxx”? Faced by every reason to be pessimistic toward the world, I wrote the crow as an endeavor to be optimistic and reproach myself for not considering the best out of the world and allowing my imagination to always take the darkest of turns. I consider this poem as the first step of my path toward optimism as a crow myself.
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.
Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again March 15, 2025. Submit here.
Upcoming
01/13 • Edward Thomas-Herrera
01/20 • Zero Laforga
01/27 • Jack Bedell
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02/10 • Gaurav Bhalla
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02/24 • TBD