"In seven years, seven months, or seven weeks..."
Rumor was that Karen got run out of her wealthy, mostly white neighborhood. Something about all that (black) traffic coming to her door. When I went to see her, narrowly a second had elapsed before I heard the frantic rustling and flapping of wings, saw black birds, as if startled by my presence, flying away from her as if she were a human scarecrow. But I did not actually see the birds. Nor did I actually hear those we-must-fly-away-now sounds. I sensed them. In that moment, sitting across from Karen, whose head was tilted, eyes closed in meditation, hands shuffling her beloved tarot cards, I was confounded as to who was the real witch, her or me.
