Angel Tears

I sat on the beach with my feet dug into the sand. I was paralyzed by grief. My dark emotions gathering like a murder of crows. One by one they would arrive, bent on stalking a lame beast. I was the beast.

I came to the ocean to heal. To get a different perspective of my life without the distractions and reminders of the terror that still tries to change me. When I close my eyes, I want to hear the waves crash upon the shore but all I hear are shots fired. I can still sense the fear, hear the whimpers, feel other's blood soaking into my clothes and the bullets ripping my flesh. I can still taste the rusty iron from the blood that hung in the air.

The place we once felt safe to be ourselves was desecrated by hate. That hate eats at my soul like those crows picking at the carrion on the side of the road. I shove it away and try to fill myself with the love of the seventeen friends I lost. Seventeen serves to remind me of the thirty-two I did not know, the injured and countless souls that would also be forever changed.

One funeral was enough to crush my fragile psyche as my body was still trying to heal from the wounds of hate. I could not attend sixteen more. I barely had anything left after one.

Instead, I came to the ocean to add my salty tears to the water and say my goodbyes to my friends on my own terms. I came here to place a flower in the water for each of the lives lost. To find the strength to not let one day ruin the rest of my life. To further toughen my skin to fend off the incredibly hurtful and evil things that spew from the mouthpieces of politics and religion.

Clouds gathered on the horizon and darkened my day on the beach. Brilliant lightning followed by crashing thunder shook me to my core. The murder of crows flew into the blackened sky as the heavens opened up bringing forth angel tears that washed me clean of the evil that entered my life on the morning of June 12, 2016.



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Inspired by those trying to heal from the devastation at Pulse in Orlando.

Writer's Cramp Prompt 6/20
A Murder of Crows is the proper designation for a group of crows.

Write a poem or story that uses the phrase: like a murder of crows