​I crouch on the corner of the skyscraper where I was placed over a hundred years ago, carved from granite. Grimacing, wings open, talons spread, I hunch on the eaves, keeping eyes on the world below. The stoneworker who placed me all those years ago scraped his hand on my stone. His blood seeped in, awakening me. I opened my eyes and growled. His body was drained of blood when it hit the ground. People said he must have cut himself on the building as he tumbled to the sidewalk. I know differently.
I watch hapless humans striding down the sidewalk, unaware of the threat lurking above. They rarely look up. If they do, they see a grimacing granite gargoyle poised at the edge of the cornice, high above them. They see what they want to see.
I’ve been alive for a century, thriving on blood, craving it, thirsting for it. Deep, crimson drops. Ruby red liquid pulsing from a slashed artery. Lifeforce draining. Staining the concrete. My favorite is the blood of young, professional women. It tastes of deep spicy determination and resilience with an aftertaste of fear. I scrabble down the drainpipe. My talons leave gouges in the copper. My victim is near.
I look down at my claws while licking rich blood from my lips. Sticky, clotting blobs congeal below my talons. My talons themselves glisten. My appetite is quenched. For now. I’ll need more blood soon.
I straighten my legs and scan the alley. Buildings so tall they touch the sky stand shoulder to shoulder to block the sun. This alley sees no sunlight, only shadows. And those of us to skulk in them.
Footsteps. Running. Getting Closer. There’s no time to claw my way back up to my aerie. I shrink back into the gloom. The runners stop, gather around the body, kneel, check for a pulse. I could tell them they won’t find one. It’s too late for the young woman laying crumpled on the asphalt. She’s beyond saving now.
My nostrils twitch at the fetid stink of bowls emptying. That stench joins the smells from the overflowing dumpster. Garbage trucks don’t lumber down this alley.
My throat is parched again. So soon. I need blood more often these days. I turn, slink further into the shadows, and wait.
Heals click down the walk. Purposeful. Confident. “Come to me,” I whisper. “Come to me.”
She hesitates. After a heartbeat she turns into the alley. A shortcut to her office. I pounce. Cut her life short. And drink until my thirst is slaked.

​Pindi hovered above the lush Gardenia covered with fragrant ivory blossoms. She beathed in the heady scent and sighed. This particular community garden was her favorite. Fairy Wands speared up between tomatoes, their tiny flowers sparkling the morning sun. Gnarled brown garden gnomes darted between rows of cucumbers, spading and hoeing the fertile earth. Wood nymphs danced along the branches of the Crepe Myrtle trees that lined the sidewalk. Pindi waved when she spotted Xylem and called out, “Good Morning.”
 If Pindi had a choice, she’d live here where she could savor the garden in each season. But, she had responsibilities now. Big ones. With a capital R. Her father Bran, King of the Green Japanese Maple Fairies, had abdicated his throne, telling everyone he was too old and tired to continue ruling. He named Pindi as his successor. She remembered how her heart had stopped – just stopped – for a few beats when she heard those words. “No! Daddy! You can’t abdicate! I can’t be Queen! I can’t do it!” She’d cried and stomped her feet and screamed and railed, terrified at the thought of stepping into his shoes. By herself. She was still reeling. Her twin sister, Mindi, had married Branch, a Leaf Fairy, and moved to his tree. She missed  Mindi so much, like someone had torn off her arm and ripped out half her heart. She still blamed their distant cousin Blade for introducing them. How was she supposed to rule in her father’s place without her sister at her side?  Pindi landed on a Fairy Wand and just breathed. In. Out. In. Out. The garden slowly worked its magic. She would be ok. She was strong enough. She was Queen Pindi.
 
The air chilled. The breeze stilled. The garden held its breath. An army of burly spiders poured through a breach in the hedge of Gardenias, hundreds of hairy legs marching in unison. “Spiders!” Pindi started, eyes wide, mouth open in a silent scream. Revolting creatures with fangs, too many legs, and red beady eyes, spiders were arch enemies of all fairies. Pindi’s father had fought the Great Spider War and defeated the spider hordes when she was 12. The battle had been fierce. Bloody. Dozens of fairy warriors were injured. Spider bodies had littered the ground, mortally wounded laying on their backs, legs writhing in their death throes. Pindi shuddered as the gruesome memory flooded into her brain. She had to move! Now! She flew towards the nearest Crepe Myrtle, barking out orders. “Gather your warriors! Xylem, grab your arrows and bow. Archers – assemble along that branch.”
“You,” Pindi commandeered a dragonfly, “fly to the Green Japanese Maple Tree. Alert my army. Get them here FAST!”
She dropped to the ground and grabbed a hoe from the nearest gnome. “Find your king. Tell him we’re under attack. Bring your spears.”
Pindi jabbed the hoe at the nearest spider, knocking it backwards just as Xylem’s arrow pierced its carapace. “Nice Work!” she yelled and glanced to her side  at the advancing spiders. She swung the hoe back and forth until her arms ached and her palms stung from developing blisters, slicing hairy spider legs with every swipe. Sweat ran into her eyes. She blinked away the sting and kept on. The roar of the battle rung in her ears and her world narrowed. Arrows whistled by, close enough to rustle her hair. She heard the grunts and rumbles of the gnomes as they stormed up from the earth, impaling spiders on their spears. The ground was slippery with green spider blood that hissed and smoked at it pooled. Pindi wrinkled her nose at the acrid, rotten sulfurous odor. She tripped over a dead spider and caught herself. Hearing thrumming overhead, she looked up as her army approached, fairies standing astride dragonflies, raining arrows at the spiders on the ground. Blade waved his sword to catch the light as Dasher swerved and swooped across the battlefield. Blade jumped down and ran  to Pindi’s side. His sword sang in the air is he slashed and dismembered enemy arachnids.
Then it was over. The few spiders who survived scuttled back through the breach in the hedge. Pindi dropped the hoe, its blade now covered with blood and gore. She put her hands to her pounding head and steeled herself to look at the carnage in the garden. Xylem jumped down from her branch cradling her arm. A gnome limped by, his leg swollen from spider venom. Pindi moved among the warriors giving comfort, taking stock. Injuries – too many. But no casualties. They beat back the spiders again. Gnomes worked alongside Fairies and Wood Nymphs to drag spider bodies and toss them into a pile at the edge of the garden. Dragons Argan and Feyren waited to burn the carcasses and purify the ground. “Let’s close that hole in the hedge,” she said, “ and then let’s go home.”
Blade watched Pindi, his heart bleeding. She was magnificent. Would she ever see him the way he saw her? 

​Most don’t see the faded beauty or grace of the abandoned, derelict manor. Most see the broken roof tiles, cracked windows, peeling paint, and rotten columns. Most see a ruin inhabited by birds lured by the skittering and slithering creatures who found their way into secret corners. I see an elegant manor returned the splendor of its heyday with its windows gleaming, its chandeliers glowing, and its doors thrown open to invite guests in formal attire. An orchestra warms up in a corner of the ballroom. Waiters pass through the crowd offering delicacies and crystal flutes of champagne. Join me as we attend a ball where the lines between human and avian blur.
 
Phoenix scowled as he strode up the wide double steps to the covered entrance. He tugged at his black and russet streaked cumber bund, a small rebellion against the formality of tux and tails. His jacket was lined with the same fabric. He would have preferred the russet and black on the outside, but at least he had the secret satisfaction of wearing his signature color. The black silk eye patch he wore added a rakish air to his rugged face. Females noticed him and smiled coquettishly trying to catch his eye. He ignored them. He didn’t want to be here. He hated formal balls. He accepted the invitation only because the hostess told him Star would be there. Phoenix stood on the wide front portico and stared across the graceful curve of the drive and the manicured lawn to the wooded area beyond. It was early. Guests were just starting to arrive. Phoenix knew Star would be fashionably late.
Phoenix watched the Rolls Royce Silver Shadow glide up the drive and stop in front of the steps. The liveried doorman held out his arm to help Garbo step lightly out of the car. A classy lady, Phoenix thought, arriving in a classy car. Not for him, though. He preferred to travel under his own power. He nodded towards Garbo. She paused, then nodded back on her way into the graceful foyer. Phoenix stayed outside.
A waiter offered a tray of hors d’ouerves. Phoenix shook his head. Another offered champagne. “No, thank you,” Phoenix told him tersely and turned to watch for Star. He decided to give her 10 more minutes before he gave his respects to the hostess and left. The late afternoon sky was starting to streak with color. Phoenix hated being out at night. Nights were for more personal pursuits. “Ahem.” Arnold the butler cleared his throat. His bald red pate and rheumy eyes belayed his attempts to keep the years at bay, but he stood soldier straight in his formal black jacket and offered a tray with a single lead crystal class holding a deep amber liquid. “I thought this would be more to your liking.” Phoenix smiled and picked up the glass of Scotch whisky. “Thank you, Arnold, how are things?”
“Just fine, sir,” Arnold replied. “Although it takes me longer to get going in the mornings these days.”
“Doesn’t it just,” Phoenix smiled. He and Arnold went way back. They had fought together on foreign soil and in their share of brawls. He had lost his right eye in one of those brawls, ending his military career. “Why don’t you join me?”
“I can’t. I’m working. If you stick around after the party, we can share the rest of this bottle.”
Sipping, Phoenix considered. Then he caught the amber flash of wings across the lawn. She’s finally come. He watched as Star soared over the trees and lighted gently on where she stood and shook out the shimmery copper skirt of her satin gown. The satin rustled faintly as she walked, like a hawk’s wings cutting through the air. “I plan to be otherwise occupied tonight,” he told Arnold.
Star felt Phoenix’s gaze and smiled to herself. She knew he wanted her and had decided to let him try. She lifted her head and met his stare. 

​This piece was inspired by a real event. I was standing under a tree near the road to The Bird Rescue Center with barn owl Garbo on my fist. A black rolls Royce came up the road and stopped next to where I was standing. The window rolled silently down and a gentleman with white hair, twinkling blue eyes, and a mischievous smile looked out at us. “Is this were I drop off an injured bird?” he asked. I pointed to the hospital building, and he drove off. The car reminded me of when I saw a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow glided up the drive to Villa Montalvo in Saratoga. The car was magical. It looked like it belonged to a different era, and I imagined a ball held in the manor. With birds, of course.
 
Garbo
Garbo looked out the window of the Rolls Royce Silver Shadow as it glided noiselessly up the circle drive to the gracious manor. She sat, spine straight as she had been taught, and smoothed the skirt of her dress. Not a gown. She wore a dress cut just below the knee. Cream colored, set with beads, fringe along the hem. Her white hair was styled in a short bob with finger waves. Her feathered arms covered in long kid-skin gloves. She belonged in this car.
The car slowed to a silent stop and a liveried doorman approached. She lifted her arm so he could help her step into the evening light. She saw Phoenix standing on the portico and hesitated at his nod. She knew him by reputation only. A dangerous hawk. She held his glance for a moment and then graciously nodded back.
The manor itself was two story white stucco with a red tile roof. A double set of stairs let up the terraced lawns to a long, columned portico. Double doors flanked by gently arched windows stood open to welcome guests. Strains of a waltz whispered through the air as Garbo floated up the steps. It was early yet. The sky glowed with the dusky blues and purples of sunset.
In the high-ceilinged foyer, Garbo accepted a crystal flute of champagne from as passing server. Lifting the glass, she let the bubbles tickle her nares while her dark chocolate eyes scanned the ballroom that opened beyond. Couples circled and swayed, skirts swirling gracefully to “The Blue Danube” played by the orchestra. Garbo heard the clinking of glasses and the murmur of conversation as she made her way around the foyer. She nodded regally at casual acquaintances and stopped to talk with old friends. She waved at Poe and Jazz across the room. They made a striking couple; his all-black tails and her rich sable wrap that brought out the gold in her large eyes. Garbo scanned the room looking for Him. She knew he would be here. That’s why she accepted the invitation. There, in the corner, in white tails, silver hair brushed back, his onyx eyes bored into hers. Champagne wasn’t on his menu tonight. Nor were oysters or caviar. Garbo and her beau saw only each other. They met in the center of the room, circled, and soared out the open French doors into the fading light and the dark shadows of the tall fir trees behind the manor.  A light breeze ruffled their feathers, bringing with it the dark secret scents of the night. They seemed to float up to the tops of the trees. Swooping, dancing. Flap, flap, glide, flap, flap, glide to the orchestra’s waltz. Finally hunting in the dark. Mating. Elegantly as only barn owls can.

​Prior Giuseppe stood by a narrow window in the three-spired gothic priory and gazed at the graveyard below. His eyes were rheumy with age, but he could see the late afternoon sun burnish the tombstones and bathe the village windows in a golden glow as if they were lit from within. The mist that always swirled around the grounds obscured the pathway through the graveyard with its frigid blanket.
Giuseppe pulled his cowl over his head and shivered. Damp seeped through the priory’s brick walls and emanated from its stone floors. His bones were always cold these days. He shook back his sleeve and looked at the nearly translucent skin of his arm, sinewed and scarred from decades of tending his garden. His fingers were knotty and bent with arthritis. Before too many more full moons, he too would be planted in the graveyard.
His garden grew well this year. Last fall, he had painstakingly exhumed bones of saints from the crypt beneath the chapel and crushed them. He sowed them under the first new moon in spring, watered them, and weeded them until they sprouted. Skeletal arms and hands speared up in rows among the tombstones. They were nearly ripe. In three days, the Hunter Moon would rise, cold and white, and his crop would be ready to harvest. Sweet, crunchy saints’ fingers. Giuseppe’s mouth watered.
Raucous ravens cawed overhead. Circling, calling others to join. They, too, liked saints’ fingers. Giuseppe hitched up his robes and hurried down the stone steps into the graveyard. He picked up his rake and swung it overhead like a gaunt scarecrow shouting at the birds. “I’ll plant you next! These are mine! Stay away!”
As dusk settled, he walked among the rows of saints’ fingers chanting softly.
On the morning of the Hunter Moon, Giuseppe rose just before dawn. He brewed a pot of femur tea, then sat to eat his breakfast of toast and pâté made from the livers of supplicants. While he ate, he thought about the crop he would harvest as the moon rose.
At nightfall, Giuseppe gathered his trowel and basket. His steps were quick on the path. He breathed in the damp, earthy scent. The air was still, silent. Ravens perched along the graveyard fence and watched, waiting. With practiced movements, Giuseppe picked up his trowel and knelt beside the first skeletal arm. The brittle saints’ fingers rattled. The hair on Giuseppe’s arms stood straight and he paused to listen. A soft slither whispered from the earth. Roots stretched, then tendrilled to grasp his ankles and circle up his legs. Bony hands reached to pull him to the ground. “No!” his cry was muffled by the soil filling his throat. As Giuseppe drew his last ragged breath, the forearms of the saints’ fingers creaked and bent. Fingers pushed earth over his body and patted it smooth.
The ravens swooped down to enjoy the harvest.

Abraham Lincoln woke with a start. He shook his marble head and knew immediately something was wrong. He stood, ignoring his stiff knees and strode down the steps of his memorial towards Thomas Jefferson’s memorial.
“Thomas, Thomas, wake up. We are needed.”
“I am awake. I know. I’m coming” Thomas stepped down from his pedestal and walked out to meet his fellow president and patriot.
“Our nation is at risk yet again. How many times must we defend against being destroyed from within? Don’t answer that.” Lincoln said.
They strode together towards the Capitol building.
They heard the creaking of long unused wheels. FDR was using all his strength to roll his wheelchair towards the Capital Mall. “Our country needs us,” he wheezed through the cigar he hadn’t smoked for years. “This is another day that will live in infamy.”
 “Let me help” Thomas Jefferson called, and wheeled FDR out on the lawn. Eleanor Roosevelt stepped out and marched with them. Souls of other brave women who fought for freedom and justice joined in.
Martin Luther King Jr. heard them coming. “My dream is threatened yet again,” he said and shook himself from the stone of his monument to join the march. “Will we ever stop hating?”
The statues of the Korean war soldiers turned and joined, waving their guns right and left, looking for threats. Threats they had fought to end.
Spirits of the dead from WWI, WWII, Viet Nam, and other conflicts rose and joined them.
Together they marched to the Capitol building.
They stood watching the aftermath of the insurgency incited by a sitting president and the threat to the democracy they all fought to keep.
And they wept.

​Dragons marched across the sky
Some were long with curving spiked tails
Others were small with web-like wings
They shifted their shapes to accommodate the wind that pushed them
But they remained dragons
 
In the early hours while the sun still slept, the dragons attacked
They swung their massive heads, spewing lightning
Long horizontal strikes ran just above the hills
Vertical strikes turned into long legged fire striders
Lighting fires with each step
 
I asked the wind to blow them away
I asked the cooling ocean fog to come rolling over the hills
I asked rain clouds to soak the flames
I asked the earth to smother them
But no answer came
 
Fire spread on gusts of wind
The rain that ran with the storm was fierce
But there wasn’t enough to slow the fires
That fed on grasses, and shrubs, and shot straight up the trees
Then jumped and swirled to others
 
Warriors fought the flames fiercely
But there were too few of them to make a difference
The fires grew
They consumed homes and buildings
And laughed as people fled in their wake
 
The fires created their own wind
To whip their sparks across the land
Nothing could stop them
Warriors tried
But the fires grew
 
Then the dragons came again

The Black Lives Matter movement is making me realize that I have been an unintentional do-gooder white woman soaked in privilege. Not arrogant privilege. Not better-than-you privilege. But a take-for-granted kind of privilege that has blinded my complicity.

I’m thinking back to the thousands of times I have shopped with no one watching or following me.  I’m recalling all the times I have driven past a police car, feeling paranoid just enough to think he might pull me over for something, but not because I’m white.

Blindspots have materialized before me during the past few weeks as I recall incidences where I intervened or tried to remedy a situation.  My actions have not always been helpful.

When I worked at The Branson School in Marin County in the 1990s, I was giving rides to a young black student. He was a freshman and was attending the school on scholarship.  I was happy to give him the ride and was paid $3/day for gas by his mother, which the student handed to me each morning.

Rather than use the money toward gas, I started putting the bills in an envelope. It was my intention to save the money then open a savings account in the student’s name, surprising him and his mother at the end of the school year.  I thought I’d start a college fund for him.  When my plan was inadvertently revealed to him during a conversation in the car, he told his mother. 

The response from her was one of outrage. She wrote me a scathing letter pointing out my presumptuousness and I was immediately dismissed from giving her son a ride to school. I was also reprimanded by the headmaster who received a call from the indignant mother.  

Apparently, my gesture came across as a white woman “rescuing” a black kid. The mom wanted to pay me for my services, not have the money used as charity back to her. I had caused her a great indignity. Did I think she couldn’t send her son to college without the help of a white woman?  I did not know the situation with the family and I'd made an assumption that my gesture would be received as an act of kindness.

This incident, which happened 25 years ago, reminds me of the presumptuous action taken by a friend of my mother’s in 1967.  This friend had taken me aside, and in conspiratorial fashion confided to me that my parents were having money trouble.  A fancy work event was coming up in which my mother would need an evening dress.  

I was 14 at the time and was into sewing, The friend told me to pick out a pattern and material, make a dress for my mom, and she would pay for it, all without my mother's knowledge.  I chose a McCall’s pattern, a scoop-necked, sleeveless design, and apricot-colored crepe fabric that I thought she would like.  I assembled the dress over several days after school before my mother came home from work so that I could surprise her when it was completed.

When I gave her the dress and told her how it had come about, I saw the look on my mother’s face. She was horrified. She was embarrassed. She was disrespected.  She teetered on a thin thread of love and adoration for me for having made the dress, and shock and violation at the friend who had made such an outrageous request of me.  My mother’s teeth were clamped as I conveyed the whole story, making the friend out to be a caring and generous person.  I didn’t understand my mother’s reaction.

She put on the dress. I saw the stress in her face. She wanted to squeeze me. Thank me for my efforts. But she was furious.  “I would have had the neck lower” is what I remember her saying.  Her cheeks were flushed as she twisted and turned in front of the mirror. The hem was a bit short with her heels.  My mom, God bless her, wore that dress to the event. Not because she couldn’t afford a new dress, but because I had made it for her. 

An act that I had believed to be kindness on the part of the friend was, in fact, an act of control.  All these years later, I understand the distinction and I now know what the friend should have done. And it wasn’t that.

When I think back to the black student in 1995, I understand now how my gesture caused that mother so much anger and indignation.  It was a big enough deal that her son was going to an elite private school that was 99% white. She didn’t need another reminder that they could receive help from yet another member of white society, especially when it wasn’t requested or discussed. 

The student ended up leaving The Branson School at the end of his freshman year.  I smarted and shook my head over the misunderstanding.  These past three weeks have revealed to me how a propensity for kindness can be misplaced.  I realize now that, in my white privilege, it is incumbent upon me to think through the reactions and unintended consequences my behavior might produce. I realize now how my intention, no matter how sincere they were through my white lens 25 years ago, was an insult to that very proud mother and her son.  A  blindspot has been revealed to me, and I am blinking hard to create clearer insight into an unprivileged non-white world.

​Ghost Fish swam slowly across the pond. If koi could waddle, she would have. Her normally bullet shaped grey body spread wide with eggs.
She felt like something big was going to happen, she just didn’t know what.
Victor and Shadow, two large male koi, swam next to her, possessively flanking her and steering her away from the other koi. She felt threatened but didn’t know why.
She felt a spurt and a need to swim wildly. Behind her, the pond water clouded with hundreds of tiny eggs. Victor and Shadow pushed Ghost Fish to the side of the pond, then chased her as she zigzagged away from them. The two males swam aggressively through the cloud of eggs, furiously spewing sperm in an unconscious need to fertilize those eggs.
Ghost Fish swam behind a water plant and hovered to rest and hide from the male koi. She was exhausted.
She looked at the eggs floating on the water but didn’t know what they were. She wasn’t wired to have maternal feelings. Most fish spawn and swim away. Eggs are fertilized or they aren’t. They develop and hatch or they don’t. They’re on their own.
Two days later, the water in the pond was clear again. There were no more eggs. The koi had eaten them.
Ghost Fish had no memory of spawning. Victor and Shadow stopped flanking her. All was normal in the koi pond again. Until next summer. 

​What if police didn’t target black men
What if those targeted didn’t die
What if we all took a knee, not out of protest, but out of respect
 
Respect for each other
For our similarities
And, more importantly, for our differences
 
What if we stood side by side, hand in hand
And saw the beauty in each other
And celebrated it
 
Skin color from ebony to cream
Eye color from black to blue
Hair from black to blond to grey to white
A beautiful rainbow of humanity
 
What if we respected each other’s lifestyles
And were curious
And asked instead of assuming intent
 
What if we worked to erase systemic racism from all aspects of our world
What if we treated each other as individuals with something to give
Each of us equal
 
I am white
I am privileged
I can’t know what its like to live in black skin
I can’t know what its like to be male
To be feared or hated because of my looks
To be suspected of crimes because of my skin
But I care
And I stand with you
 
What if we all stood together
Not to pretend we’re all the same because we aren’t
Not to be colorblind because we can’t
But to celebrate the rainbow we create
And to listen to our hearts beat as one