The Barn Owl on Pickard Street

First time I spotted the barn owl on Pickard Street was the winter of 2006. It was the middle of the night, and I was halfway back home right by the canal, about to cross the bridge. In fact, I wasn’t about to cross the bridge. I was flat on the pavement. There was blood everywhere: my hands, my clothes, my face. I couldn’t move. A metallic taste was coming down my throat, thick and slow. I looked up and there it was: the barn owl, high up on a branch of a leafless tree by the canal. I thought I was dying there and then, and the barn owl was going to be my only witness.

Barn owls are not particularly smart birds. That’s what a woman giving a talk at the natural museum told us when I was a kid. They cannot learn any tricks; they’re not like crows, she said. I thought it was odd that she thought owls were less intelligent because they wouldn’t do some stupid trick in front of a human audience in exchange for a dry pellet of food. I thought owls were maybe more intelligent, or at least prouder than crows. I’m still not sure if pride is a weakness that made us afraid of being seen as we are or a strength against the world that insists we’re unworthy. Maybe barn owls are less pragmatic or less adaptable than crows, at least when it comes to cohabiting with human beings. Survival is overrated. My father never died until he couldn’t do anything by himself and then he died anyway. The woman also said owls have very poor sight and that’s why they only hunt in the dark, when their weaknesses does not expose them to being bullied by crows, which gang up on them and when prey like rabbits or mice were at a disadvantage. She also said barn owls are in fact tiny, light-weight creatures hiding behind their puffy feathers. I think that woman disliked barn owls, and I felt sorry for the owl she was showing us, which was attached to her wrist by a thin chain around its leg. The only thing god thing that woman said about barn owls is that they can flap their gigantic wings and plunge in the air without a sound.

I did see the barn owl on Pickard Street again. This time I had a camera with me – we are not allowed to use phones. It was earlier, at sunset – there was light enough and I did take a picture. Then I put away my camera and whispered to the barn owl perched high up in the skeleton of the bald canopy can you get me out of here because I don’t think I can keep on living like this, friend. My parents are dead, and I have no friends. My back hurts all the time like there’s pliers around my backbone, and I can’t understand what people are saying to me anymore. I’m a blind noun fumbling about for a verb that can take me out of here. Please, friend, get me out. With a gentle, sidelong soundless crash, the barn owl landed on the rail on the bridge, close to me. The bird adjusted itself on the rusty pipe and stared at me with coal-black eyes. Then it let out a single, piercing screech. My eyelashes got wet. I could hear my heart throbbing in my ears, and I felt a lump in my throat dissolving around my mouth. I took a long, slow breath of cold air in. Everything went dead silent again. The barn owl flew away into the woods by the canal, again without a sound. Gently coming down, the big white disc of the winter sun died in the background, and it got dark. I had never gotten a gift so precious, overflowing in the evanescence of memory onto this page. It was like the melting apart of a nebula from pre-primordial chaos offering itself right there in front of me.

It was only that. Only everything.

When I got home, my uncle looked at me from his couch and said:

– Hey, you’ve arrived! And I just said:

– No, not yet…

And life went on its way.