Bestiary: The Owl

She jogs down the asphalt path in the morning; not the early morning; she’s not one of those early-morning runners; no, this is more of a late-morning event, because she’s working second shift at the store, so she has time to wait until the late morning to haul her ass out of bed, put on the shoes, lace up the laces, and get out the door.

At this point in her run, all she can feel is the weakness in her legs, so she tries to distract herself by paying close attention to the slant of light through the trees that line the path on either side. She tells herself how beautiful the light is, how precious the golden mist at this time of day; but beneath those uplifting thoughts is a dogged weariness and the niggling discomfort that comes with the awareness that she had intended to do more with this morning: call her mother, swing by the bank, throw at least one load of laundry in the washer, even go to the store if she could manage it.

She jogs down the path—not much of a jog, more of a speeded-up trudge, really, or a slowed-down trot—and regrets that she hasn’t done more with her morning, her day, her whole life, while she’s at it. Her whole life, which, now that she thinks about it, is nothing more than a span of time. Nothing more than a bucket full of seconds; or it used to be full, but the bucket is emptying through a hole that was drilled in the bottom on the day she was born; she knows the truth of that emptying; she feels it deep in her heaving lungs; ever since she turned thirty she’s been wondering how much life is left to her; and as she thinks about the seconds carelessly scattered along the ground, her feet scuffle along even more slowly, her gait stutters, she almost trips, she decides to stop.

Then a large whitish blur passes before her eyes and she thinks in a frenzied moment that this is it, she’s having a stroke or a heart attack while jogging, how ironic, and she hopes that everyone at her funeral will have a sense of humor about it—and the barred owl swoops upward in front of her and alights on a branch next to the path, where it turns to regard her with black jewels of eyes as she stumbles by.

She stumbles onward, trying to put more distance between her and the owl, her heart pounding all the faster. So close to her, and she didn’t even hear it until it was already gone! That sharp, thin little beak, so perfect for getting at the tender inward parts. It could have sliced her open like a sausage if it had wanted to. That swiftness. That lightness. Silence.

She runs onward, a little faster now, no longer seeing the cracked pavement, the precious golden mist; only seeing the owl; wondering what it would be like to be an owl. To launch from your branch at a time of your choosing. To glide easily—so easily—to within a hair’s breadth of your prey. To be there in the flick of an iris contracting against the late-morning light.

And then to lift it up in your talons and carry it to your branch and rip out the entrails in a neverending instant. Feathers spattered with the bright blood of eternity.