There is a legend in these lands
Told in warm melodious voices of an alien language
Now lost among towering pine trees.
Words that dart among crackling flames and those glittering stars
Sewn unevenly
through the shadowed sky
An incandescent sight.
Days of
Wandering and ambling buffalo
Days of clear skies and clean streams
Of long, rustling grass
Of smoke-filled air
And the sweet smell of rain.
We tell in hoarse whispers
of the raven
Of her ebony feathers
And dancing obsidian eyes as if
alive with flickering flames.
The day when they come
From deep beneath the earth
in numbers as vast as the stars,
when they swoop amongst gray clouds
Like an ominous army,
Obscuring the sun in a curtain of black,
Ink blots against the bone-pale sky.
When they come,
It tells us one thing.
It is raven season.
And that is when we all die.

Glacial air scraped skin like the
kiss of a razorblade.
Ice seeped into our blood,
pumped into our hearts.
And when we looked up,
there was
a swollen, churning cloud of
black.
a tempest
a
torrent a
frenzy
of vinyl feathers.
We knew then
it was raven season.
And then they came.
We thought they were angels
in their pale beauty.
But their wings were broken,
and they were forever grounded.
They came
With their clicking weapons
And blood-encrusted knives
And they slaughtered us
One
by
one.

Monsters do exist
They just hide in the shadows.
This school was named for a lovely flower,
Reminiscent of a past age.
It does not yet bear its ugly, slashed
scars.
This is school is no different than any other
Ordinary
Unremarkable
Ugly colored carpet in swirling patterns,
Pressed with dirt from thousands of long-gone footsteps.
Memorabilia of times long past
Trophies, awards, framed photos of shining faces grinning
Gather dust in glistening display cases.

One sunny April day,
two boys walked into a school
and murdered thirteen people.
They had guns in their backpacks
Death clunking heavily among
loose pencils.
They were
espresso eyes
and thorny smiles.
Wicked edges.
A melted sun was smudged
at the crown of the sky,
made hazy by thick clouds.
A gilded strand of sunlight
cascaded from a chink in the misted gray
Narrow, curling shadows pooled like ink across grass.
Thirteen ravens pecked and cawed
Obsidian eyes narrowed.
It was time.
Could it be raven season already?
Summer was coming,
but she had nightmares.
Nightmares of blood seeping into the gray carpet
smeared across gray lockers.
She drew thirteen teardrops on her
notebook paper
and proceeded to the library
that smelled like tumbling words
where they shot her.
Their screams drifted through the air
Scattering like rusty leaves in a storm.

“Hell is empty,
all the monsters are here.”
Darkness descended
Wisps curled around a glowing moon like
silvery ivy.
It was midnight and
costumed girls jittered with excitement.
Women with cascades of pale hair clutching babies and
little boys
Dressed up in masks and capes
This nightmare felt like magic.
Tickets,
unwanted,
fluttered to the dirty floor,
The greasy smell of popcorn wafted
though the stale theater air.
Voices chattered and trilled.
Outside the theater,
Twelve blackened ravens,
dark as the liquid night they were entangled in
feathers shimmering like a
pool of oil
splashing broken colors across
spread wings.
softly cawed,
raising goosebumps.
Raven season had begun.

The silence between the bullets was
deafening.
Blood flowed freely,
staining the gray carpet.
A cadaverous odor permeated the air
like thick perfume.
Did they laugh, then?
As they watched
lion-hearted girls struck down
boys with
Nerves of steel
taunt, warped, crooked.
broken.
Had the stars paused
in their far-away glimmering?
Had the earth flung to a graceful stop,
hovering eerily in empty space?
Had gravity ceased?
The universe was incongruent
unaligned
Because none of this could be real.

A raven screamed.
They heard the gunshots

But they laughed.
What a movie,
they mused
it feels so real.
If they could return to that still moment,
what would they say?
Forever unspoken goodbyes trembling on
lips.
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
Their screams reached
a piercing crescendo.
They died.
A different place,
a different time,
but slaughtered like us,
just the same.
But
they sighed softly as if they had finally found their way
home.
They closed their eyes.
And it was over.