The Badlands Hold Me as I Grieve

Slowly, the raptor turned its great head and stared at me. I was stunned to meet the gaze of a one-eyed owl, who bore a scar where its second eye should have been. It was frightening yet oddly familiar. It was as if I were looking into the one good eye of my father, whose left eye had been swollen nearly shut, virtually sightless from decades of glaucoma. The father who died in my younger sister’s arms. The father to whom I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.