Hugh Behm-Steinberg
Me and My Owl
I wait in the office, me and my owl. I’m writing in my notebook: characters, backgrounds, plot points, world building—but nothing makes sense.
“You need to eat more mice,” my owl says.
“Three each day. Isn’t that enough?” I ask, grinding my teeth. They taste horrible so I swallow them whole.
“Not if you don’t want to stay in your body,” the owl says, preening her feathers. “Especially if you won’t chew.”
I dream of leaving my body, just like all the great novelists do. It’s said that Pierre Menard, before writing Don Quixote, had been away from his body for so long spiders had spun webs in his ears.
“Your novel is waiting for you,” my owl tells me. “It’s so beautiful; it shivers with moonlight. You just need to eat more mice.”
All I have to do is eat more mice, and get out of my body. Follow my owl. Return with my novel.
“And not get shot,” says my owl.
It still shouldn’t be hurting, but it does. A tiny, unhealed wound, my novel scampering off in the woods.
The intern looks up from his monitor. “The doctor will see you now.”
Until you come back, nothing is whole
We’re sitting on our parents’ couch. My brother pokes me but I’m not there. His children walk though my ghost. It’s ok, I walk through my ghost too.
His daughter, Kirstie, looks at me. “Are you really a ghost?”
“Yes,” I say in my easy-does-it voice, trying to be more spiritual than spooky.
“Can you eat my homework, then?” I tell her I’m a ghost, not a dog.
“I know,” she says, “but it’s due tomorrow, and everyone’s going to make fun of me.”
“Okay,” I say. “Just this once.”
I eat her social studies homework, one entire workbook. Everything a fifth grader should know about civic competence, the awareness of self and others, from which the underpinnings of all the history and wonders of every culture may be discovered, as well as all the multiple ways there are to interpret, analyze, and make sense of the world; it swirls around inside me. Kirstie laughs and gets her sister Tonia: “We’ll never have to do homework again!”
“But you should know about these things,” I tell Kirstie. “There are people and buildings and ghosts you really need to know about.” I’m trying my best not to be scary about this.
Kirstie and Tonia jump through me back and forth like I’m a bonfire until my brother tells them it’s time for bed.
This time I’ll be the good uncle. I’ll be the good uncle who comes back, even though he doesn’t want to come back. He will come back even if he has to act like a dog for others to see him. I won’t be a ghost all the time.