Lucien's Lil Nook

My first year of college, I have a memory of when two of friends and I smoked a boat-load of weed and walked around my small college town without a single care in the world. On the edge of winter blooming into spring, my hair bleached blond from its practically black original color, our lives felt budding, on the precipice of blossoming. The strange finally settling into the familiar, the new just becoming mundane, and those moments only tightened the knots of our relationship. The roots of our destinies were becoming intertwined, inseparable, adolescent adults that formed a circle of friendship where vines knitted together our fledglings of love into a family nest for us to roost. The rays of the sun were golden, as was my hair, and we took dozens of pictures that day, capturing this liminal moment for the sake of permanence. And as I scroll through those photos, I land on the picture of a dead crow.

We discovered its body towards the end of our trip, our high had begun to fade and reality tinted darkness on our gold. One friend, repulsed by the sight, refused to inch any closer to the corpse. The other one sought meaning from the crow, diving into a potential analysis, reflecting our fate. A symbol of death, the crow seemingly cast a nefarious shadow in its wake. However, many signs of death don’t tell of doom but of change, and the death of a crow, so morbid yet plain between the blades of yellow grass, lended the idea of a great change coming our way.

This was early 2020, in a small town of Iowa. We were naive. We were oblivious. None of knew the pandemic was coming yet, our hindsight decided that this crow, this corpse was our harbinger of the pandemic.

We foresaw this event, in one way or another, and ignored its messages. I mean, there wasn’t any true way to understand or know this future, but it instilled an awe in the world around me. An acceptance of my ignorance and a reverence of the universe’s ways of planting clues into our lives. And this new vision I discovered, cursed me blind. I sought signs and meaning, wishing for another crow, another corpse of a corvid, praying to deities that I had no faith in, all to send guidance in my Covid solitude.

I never got answers. And I say this now, three and a half years later, after I’ve graduated into adulthood, that there were never any answers in the first place. Hindsight brought its meaning to light, not my immediate reaction to the crow. Those signs would never be warnings, only uncontrollable realizations.

I miss life before the pandemic, but who doesn’t? The weight of responsibility pressed onto the entirety of humanity following the global pandemic continues to linger in our minds and the spaces around us. I miss my carelessness, my naivety. I felt as if I lost something that I gained during that first year in college. Not the friends that I still keep close to my heart, but the freedom to dream, wistful and care-free. After surviving my childhood years, college felt like a new opportunity, one to discover myself without the chains of responsibility placed on me by my family. Instead, the world reminded me that I couldn’t escape from my past, sending me back home to mull over the irresponsible and naive idea that I could leave it all behind.

I write this in my bed, sick with Covid, reminded of the crushing realization that no one can repeat their childhood. A thought that I evade constantly and will continue to, until my legs give out and shatter under the pressure of the expectations and resentments that I have only myself to blame for placing them onto my shoulders. Nausea swirls within my body as I realize I’ve become just another atom in the atmosphere, another brick of the foundation of my first-year dorm building that was most-likely made through cheap and extortionist labor, another cog in the watch of my father’s heart that ticks away his time to live, another name on the list of my ex-lovers that only recall the first letter of it, another playing card that he wrote the most sweetest words to express a love that I didn’t understand as I couldn’t pin-point the conditions I met in order to receive his affection.

I’ve faded into the background of my own life. I’ve let myself be carried along a current, one that I had dreamed and wished for and finding myself no different from the boy who didn’t cry as his parents curled up with him and his sister on the floor to reveal their plans for a divorce. That boy didn’t realize he would be consumed by their hatred for one another, vying for their love but only receiving it when he satisfied their needs. His parents decided the parts of himself he’d value and the parts he needed to change, that needed to be erased, not just to appease his parents, but to survive.

I lived my life for other people because I believed I held no inherent value. I became a magic mirror for the people who surrounded me, supporting them for an inkling of recognition. I was a slut for praise. But if they saw one flaw in my glass, a hairline fracture, I ran. It was only a matter of time for them to realize what I already understood about myself.

I’ve returned to this little boy I locked in a box inside of my heart. He’s an amalgamation of the most familiar parts of my life, the times I was at my worst. As I return, I have to push myself harder in order to break free of the walls I’ve built around myself. I’m scared to experience life outside this apartment I share with my partner. This space has become familiar, stable, and homely, something I seldom had as a child. Maybe I’ll be able to even parent this terrified little boy.

But, what I’m scared of most is the potential to see another crow corpse,

that I might find its slumber soothing

and lay down the boy

beside its body.