A big black raven has gotten into my apartment. I live in a high rise, thirty stories up. I open a window. It's tiny, not much bigger than the bird, and it's high—too high for me to properly reach. I guess it's the only window in the place. This never works, I think, as I chase the bird from room to room, trying to edge it closer to the open window. My cat scurries through, alarmed by the commotion.
The bird lands on the floor. It is standing, but it is still.
This will never work, I think, as I lunge toward it. But it does work. I wrap my arms around the bird, contain it. There is a final step. One that can still go awry.
It's two days before Halloween. My cat is black. The raven is black. Like death. A bird in the house means death. I'm dreaming, but I don't know that as I lift the bird toward the tiny open window. I shove its face into the fresh air, and prepare to release.
But then I doubt. Is this the bird, or am I lifting my cat to the window? I look closely, study its face, its beak, its legs—bird legs. It is the bird. It's safe to let go. I let go.
I don't see the bird fly, but it is gone. Now a white cat appears on the thin window sill, precariously perched. How did it get there? I don't have a white cat, only a black one. And there are no neighboring balconies it could have leapt from—this high rise is modern and slick with glass and steel and it’s straight as an arrow. I'm afraid to touch the cat, afraid not to. White is another color that represents death, said the invitation to Samhain my goddess group sent me. At this time of year, the veil between life and death is at its thinnest.
I do something—what do I do? Touch the cat? Try to look past it for those nonexistent balconies? I don't know what I do, but the cat falls.
No. No! This is not how this is supposed to go. I can't save the cat, and love is ripped from my heart as I raise myself to the window and lean out. The animal doesn't struggle—it falls like a stiff, pale, cat-shaped object, upright, unmoving, rapidly toward its demise. I cycle through helplessness, guilt, a great sense of waste, a wish to time travel, to go back three minutes, to avert this senseless tragedy. Maybe it'll land on its feet, I tell myself. Maybe its fall will be broken by those trees. But it's a long, long fall and I know I'm kidding myself. I watch every moment of the cat's plummet in real time, a fall that lasts an eternity, a gut-wrenching, sickening view.
The cat disappears into the trees, far, far below, sparing me the gory scene. It's dead, I say to myself, and there is nothing I can do. But I have to know, and my feet quickly carry me, against my will, out the door of my apartment and into the hall. I miss the first elevator, bang on the door, beg the people inside to open it. It takes forever to catch another, to squeeze into the crowd inside, to descend. I run outside.
I wake up.
It's Sunday, the day of Samhain. I skip the ritual; I have too much to do. Early Monday morning I learn a friend took his life on the day of my dream. The news is shocking—he spoke to me cheerfully only days ago.
Helplessness. Guilt. A great sense of waste. A wish to time travel, to go back three days, to talk to my friend. What are you thinking? You must have a thousand friends. I've seen joy in your eyes. Shit rolls off you like water. Suicide is a knock on an open door. Do something different. Change it up. People love you. You have two college-age kids who need you. They're in your driveway, right now, mumbling to your roommate, lifelessly hoisting box after box of junk into an unfamiliar car.
You have pretty words Shannon.