When I used to cut school by myself, I walked to the park, climbed the little ladder on the back door of the van we abandoned in Flushing Meadows, and lay on the roof looking up at the sky. Mom and I used to do the same when we lived on the go. Whenever life got too crummy inside the van, we chilled, admiring the world above us. A good thing about being homeless is that the world becomes a living room. We’d seen shooting stars in the middle of the day creating lines in the skies as if God was out there sketching a new world. Mom said it was a blimp, but I made a wish on the shooting star anyway. If we looked up long enough, we’d notice the movement of the world. It either made us dizzy or gave us perspective. I’d never felt smaller or more full of light.
If I squinted, Mom reminded me not to look at the sun, but how would I find the sunspots if I didn’t squint my eyes? God forbid I sweat, Mom said I’d go blind. I asked if she ever met a person who lost sight from an eclipse, and she started naming a bunch of Colombian-sounding people I am sure she made up, and I would never remember. She smacked my shoulder when I told her it was all a myth.
“Neither crows nor bees fly in straight lines,” I told Mom, but she said she didn’t want to change the topic. I hadn’t changed the topic, the topic changed me. A small crow flew to the north of me, right next to my ear, landing on top of the van. It couldn’t move its wing. The bird walked slowly and uncomfortably toward me, tilting from side to side like a person trying to squeeze into a shirt that’s three sizes too small. The beak was open and gasping for air.
Mom dwindled when the crow came closer to me. “No lo toques,” she cautioned, as if the bird only spoke English, and wouldn’t understand us. To reassure that I came in peace, I hovered my hands close to its beak, then worked my way down its velveteen feathers—slowly undoing the floss tied around its wing. It was so black and luminous that I got lost figuring out if every color that ever existed lived within the tips of the feathers—an optical illusion that put the infinite universe at my fingertips. Couldn’t help but to walk into the rays of blues, purples, and reds that meshed into my skin as I stroked the bird. Had I become reflective and glossy? I looked at my hands again–brown and ashy as ever–not even close to the unbound blackness of the little flying beasts.
“Ciera ojos,” Mom said, covering my face with her hand.
“Venus is out there, but we won’t find it with our eyes shut.”
Jhon Valdes Klinger is an Afro-Latinx, New York City-raised, Colombian writer, filmmaker, and educator. He received an M.F.A. from The New School’s Creative Writing Program. He worked as a teaching artist at UrbanWordNYC and as a middle school English Language Arts teacher in Richmond, California. Jhon’s writing can be found in Acentos Review, Vagabond City Journal, Monsters of the Bronx, and the Ipstori App in Mexico. For more information check out his website jhonvLaldes.com.
Image: “Collection of Crows” by Alex J. Tunney
Pine Hills Review 