You Chose Crow (Fiction)

The thing I hate most about you now is your ugly beak. I hate that it is shiny and hard and as long as the whole entire rest of your head. I hate its pointy end and your sharp black tongue inside. I hate your wrinkled black nostrils. Sure, I am glad your guardian creature was there or we’d be very very dead right now, but why couldn't you think of anything else? That crow came diving into the gully just ahead of our plummeting car and you couldn't focus on the decision at hand? The creature demanded “Choose!”. You chose “Crow.” You never think, do you?
I don’t mind your black beady eyes. They are not that different from when you used to squint across the kitchen table at me, drunk and stoned and angry. I don’t mind your hunched posture. It is not that different from when you came home from work, hot and filthy, and skulked around the edges of the kitchen, looking for beer and Jack Daniels. It is not even your hideous shriveled claws I hate most, for they are much like your metal-cut and dried-blistered and callused hands were. It is that beak. That awful black and shiny pointed beak.
No, wait. That must be second what I hate the most. What I well and truly hate the most is that when I look at you, it is like looking in the mirror, for to the untrained observer, now, you and I look exactly alike. Exactly. Alike. That is what I hate the most.
Artwork by Sheri Lee Butler, Warrenvlle, IL