portents

From atop the pines comes a scrambling and squawking. I look up to see a murder of crows erupting from and returning to the treetops, barely visible against the dark sky. It is an ebb and flow of conflict, rustling wings and branches in slightly different tenors. I pull my hood up and walk under the possibility of falling needles, shadowed in an old-fashioned silhouette against the sidewalk. No wolves in sight, though.

The next day, a man bicycles past, a quiver of arrows stuck out of the back of his pack. I think about the man in Rhode Island who killed another man, in a road rage incident, with a crossbow he'd pulled from his car.

We eat candy canes at the bar from a small glass cup. None of them are peppermint.