Raven

My eyelids fluttered closed like heavy burdens.
Sharp shooting pains in my temples sent me to sleep.
I could not breathe in the suffocating pillow
And I slipped into unconscious deep.

I found myself in a white room.
The walls were glass, the floor was snow,
It was empty and there was no door.
Where was I? I did not know.

I saw a movement through the glass,
A dove, barely visible against the blankness.
It flew by, again, again, again,
On a weird loop in a weird canvas.

The bird’s screeching was the only sound
For miles and miles it seemed.
I spin around and around until
The bird was not the only creature as I dreamed.

A ghost, a spirit, of a man.
He was tall and crouching on the floor
Like a warrior on one knee after battle.
I saw in his poor, bloodshot eyes, he’d only just returned from war.

His nose was bleeding steady droplets of scarlet.
They sizzled like hot iron when they fell onto the snow.
Slowly I wandered to the place that he knelt
And I saw that he was crying with fear and woe.

I cautiously offered my hand, symbolic of my help.
Instead of taking it, he placed in my palm a flower
Coloured with the droplets of his scarlet blood.
I dropped it but my hands were stained black with wretched power.

A deafening screech and thud echoed throughout our glass prison.
I saw the bird had broken it’s inevitable loop
and cracked the wall and shattered us like a wounded heart.
Devoid of wild instincts I didn’t see the dove swoop.

There may have been a brutal collision
Had the man not been by my side.
But he was there and he saved me
With one strong, long stride.

Too slim and sickly to be a real warrior,
I wondered who the young man was.
I am bird, he declared, wringing the dead dove in his fist.
That makes no sense, I said after a slight pause.

I am Raven, your ill omen as you flit into death.
Chose to stay or fly away with me into the dark.
He threw the dead dove at my feet and it bled a halo.
Dead dove or the Raven with whom I had a spark?

The choice was a simple one and one I got to make.
One last pain of suffocation and forever in abyss.
I got to travel, see and learn like I never did in life.
I got to dance, fly with Raven and forget to reminisce.