Blackbirds

I’ve never looked at a blackbird in any sort of way. Don’t know what a blackbird is. A crow, maybe? Crows I’ve seen. Once spotted a crow pulling half a hotdog out of my neighbor’s gutter as if it were its personal pantry, a stain of crude oil fluttering along the asphalt shingles. I think I’ve seen a raven before but I can’t say for sure. It may exist in my mind more as a team’s symbol or a fragment from Poe. Turkey buzzards I’ve seen. Always used to mistake them for hawks. I heard someone call their depression a blackbird. They said it had lustrous feathers and would swoop in every winter to peck a hole in their chest the size of a world. Said they could hear the wind whistle through it for weeks. They never said which world, whether it was ours or their own. I can’t say I’ve seen this exact bird either but now and then, both behind the quiet and within the din, I swear I’ve heard a rustle of feathers, a world of absence with nothing to mark it but a cold, whistling wind.