Saw a crow feather.

I want to remember something about being small.

I am walking on top of a small plain of dark soil near the cafeteria (every flat surface is geometric, an aesthetic treat for crows) beneath the reaches of heavy trees. Here, there is something I’ve touched before, at one time, a thing exactly like this, that’s below me now, was in my small hands, spun by my treaded fingertips. A black feather- pressed down into wet dirt with it’s white stem, a bone, curving up, praying without a sound or movement. No song. The tiny black lashes which make it up... once in my fingers. 'Little by little,' Little Fist, pulling up the lashes again. Little Fist, holding the white stem with its messy, mangled black lashes (like they'd just woken up in a scary place), pulled upward so hard to make them pretty. I would find the last black lash sometime later stuck on my shirt sleeve. The spine became alone, became an unimportant piece of something. Something not necessarily unfixable, but uncared for, less, unthought of. The feather, whole, how pretty. But, the stem, like plastic, probably garbage, probably someone’s litter. Terrible, ugly. How strange- while playing, while petting and twirling a feather, I never once thought the feather, a crow.