It happened earlier in the day. I got into a fight with Angela and freaked myself out. Come bedtime we were like two cats curled on separate pillows.
Then the raven, its darkness flying through the open window. It settled in bed between us. The raven’s beak inches from my neck. The raven interrupting my dream about lifting a bus over my head to throw at Angela.
But the bird’s presence charmed me. I thought, Hey, a raven has got into bed with us, maybe we’re being honoured in some way. It took up a lot of room. When I touched its wing it felt sharp like the teeth of a chainsaw.
Still, it was really hard to understand where the raven fit into the family drama. I tried to think about that. How ravens, along with crows, magpies, and jays, belong to the family of birds called Corvidae. How I belong to the group of people with the thinnest skin. How ravens are more intelligent than border collies. How I’ve often thought Bandit was smarter than me.
Angela didn’t know the raven was in bed with us because she didn’t wake up. She spent the night curled and battling on the other side of the bed. With the raven lying stiff between us. Some people have even less, I thought.
For the first time it seemed funny about my name being Matt. It was like I’m matted together with Angela and it was painful being pulled apart and then to have a large bird lying between us.
Angela and the raven slept but I couldn’t. Crows shooting laser beams out of their eyes like superheroes – that I could understand. But a raven using my bed as a nest?
Maybe I’d caused the raven to materialize, I thought, it being a crazy, negative reaction to fighting with Angela. Maybe the raven was the dark side of me.
I guess I drifted off. In the early morning a bunch of burly, tattooed men threw tomatoes at me. Which woke me up. Angela woke up, too, and pulled the covers back. The raven startled and flew out the window. Angela screamed, said something about my bizarre pets, and fled to the bathroom.
There wasn’t much of the raven left to prove it had even been there: a couple of feathers, some dirt, and several grey bugs. I think it was the bugs crawling across the white sheet that got Angela screaming. Bugs the size of earwigs.
It might be utopian, but I like to believe in the great zone where two people can reach out and communicate while under the same covers. Minus a raven.
I decided to use the bus I’d dreamed about earlier in an abstract and poetic way. I’d tell Angela that when she came out of the bathroom. I’d say I wasn’t trying to go over her head. I’d say I was fighting with her to say just anything. 