Colleen Rastovich

To Whoooooom it May Concern

“To Whoooooom do you refer?” the barn owl asked himself aloud, as he did nearly every evening at precisely midnight. It was an odd, open-ended question, as forever he knew it would be. Although he asked thrice, each time in crescendo, he knew that no one dared answer. His crimson-lined heartface impressively rotated over his broad chest, expanding in all directions, looking for the slightest movement: a rustle, a breath, an irregular heartbeat from under the snow. A children’s taunt, sing-sung in feathered moonbeams, focused for a moment in his mind, ”thrice a night entice the mice…a meal of two will never do…..”