It’s always sunny in Chicago

I remember Jasmine, Willie, and Davarus. The summer of pyros. I remember finding it. A crow as black night, which was extremely weird, I remember every aspect as clearly as if I’m reliving the entire experience at this moment. It was the middle of a Chicago summer, 97 degrees out. There were 300 seagulls in the sky and the one bird that happened to be on the ground was this crow this jet black crow which in a sea of white could have only resembled a dark speck of dirt or oils on a seagulls wing.

It was weird to think about, why was this bird here it was the only one of it’s kind in site. As a child with a seriously over active imagination my first thought was that the crows and the seagulls had had a turf war over this area in which there were so many pieces of stale bread and other possible food sources to choose from. The seagulls had mounted a surprise attack, that had engaged the to sides in a tumultuous battle for hours; the crows only retreating after they were sure there was no other choice most wounded but one had died and been left to rot.

I never actually figured out what happened to that poor crow. There were the teen drivers who had, just moments before we arrived, sped by in a car with a gun aimed out the window. They were shooting into the sky, a scene of pure jubilation, but they weren’t really aiming in that general direction. There were also 7-12 year old’s, gallivanting around with there precision shooter BB guns. If you had asked me I would have told you they were a bit happy on the trigger, but there was no more, or less to be said about that either. The only moving targets they could hit were there size and up. There was also the less climactic possibility that it had just circled one of the streetlights, mistaking it for a star to navigate by, and died of exhaustion.

I guess what happened to it doesn’t really matter as much to others as it does to me, so let’s get back to the real story. We had come across this crow Jasmine, Willie, Davarus, and I. To leave it there to rot would have been a fate worse than death. An idea was forming in my demented eight year old head. Founded in something I thought to be the equivalent of a 21 gun salute for a fallen war hero who was a bird. No pun intended.

“We should burn him.” I said.

They just all shrugged and bobbed their heads in unison. We all went off to grab separate things that we knew we were responsible for supplying when we started fires. I wrapped the crow up tight in tissue paper and sat him back down. William handed me a lighter. I looked down on the mummified cadaver of the crow, nestled in a patch of intermingled clovers and dandelion weeds. Then I realized.
“If I sat it on fire here it’ll burn up this whole field.”

So instead we picked it up and moved it, placing it atop a pile of dirt, rocks. To make it especially special I implemented the knowledge I had learned the summer before when I was seven, and I made an addition of dried leaves to the pile. I picked him up, and wrapping one last roll around him I lay him back atop his pyre. We backed away, slowly unraveling it the tissue as we did so. I sat it down about 4 feet from the pyre and lit it.

We watched as the amber flame ate away at the tissue, It getting shorter and shorter, closer and closer as it did. Finally it reached the pyre igniting in a magnificent flare of emerald green. The leaves had been a nice touch. Suddenly, just then the most agonizing tooth shattering sound I’d ever heard tore through the space between us and the crow. it hopped up still partially wrapped in tissue, but completely engulfed in flames. It was unreal the green flames against it’s craven feathers the image of some twisted, morbid, wicked, phoenix. It spread it’s wings took off in flight’s and in less time than it took him to get up there it was black on the grind. Jumping, cawing, twitching. It was like a dance done to impress a mate. Then, he was dead again.

I’ve never really spoken of it to date. None of us have. Probably the pent up feelings of remorse. As of yet I’m still reproachful in thinking of it. Your never supposed to regret. That’s what they say. Never do anything you’ll regret, and never regret anything you do. That’s so stupid. Sorry to say, but I look back and regret a lot of things as I’m sure so many others do. It’s a sad fact but humans with all our logic, reason, and mental superiority are prone to mistake. It’s what you do after you make a mistake that matters. Do you convince yourself that you did nothing wrong, or do you own up and try to be better about what you do next?