hometown//adulthood
by Sierra Parsons
There are so many crows in Culver City.
They cover the early morning sidewalk like
black fog; rise to perch on telephone wires
with the heat of the day. Someone once told
me the reason there are so many crows in this
town is because they just dumped them here after
they filmed The Birds. I know this probably isn’t true
and yet I still wonder what it’s like to fly— to be left
in the city after you’re no longer needed.
I moved home a month ago but already my hair is
falling out and I have ulcers in my mouth. My mother
says it’s stress but I keep thinking, what if this is
what adulthood is supposed to be. I sat in a chair
in my first boyfriend’s bedroom the other day and
suddenly felt 16 again, like nothing has changed
but really everything is always already changing
and I can’t quite figure it out but everything started
humming my name. Last week I saw two people
fucking on top of my high school auditorium
and I keep asking myself why the dogs in my
neighborhood won’t stop barking. I walk underneath
the jacarandas of my street, try to remember the places
where I’d skinned my knee as a child. I crouch down,
search for my DNA in the cracks of the pavement.
Surely, I’ve left myself here.
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