by Audrey T. Carroll (she/they)
Audrey T. Carroll is the author of What Blooms in the Dark (ELJ Editions, 2024), Parts of Speech: A Disabled Dictionary (Alien Buddha Press, 2023), and In My Next Queer Life, I Want to Be (kith books, 2023). Her writing has appeared in Lost Balloon, CRAFT, JMWW, Bending Genres, and others. She is a bi/queer/genderqueer and disabled/chronically ill writer. She serves as a Diversity & Inclusion Editor for the Journal of Creative Writing Studies, and as a Fiction Editor for Chaotic Merge Magazine. She can be found at http://AudreyTCarrollWrites.weebly.com and @AudreyTCarroll on Twitter/Instagram.
My mother always said it was bad luck to hit a crow. Breaking a mirror, that’s seven years bad luck. But hitting a crow? Seven lifetimes bad luck. She always did the sign of the cross whenever we passed roadkill, even if she was the one driving, and she’d mutter something to herself. These days, I pray whenever I drive past roadkill; I pray twice when passing by a heap of black feathers. My mother was wearing her shaggy black coat the day she died. I wonder if anyone prayed for her as they sped past.