text: There was an old owl that I used to see around my apartment. I always found him strange-owls did not belong in the city, I thought, and he’d be much happier making a home in some drafty barn with a hay loft and broken shutters and mice to eat. But he was here, and he often sat perched on a high branch near the trunk of a tree that grew outside my bedroom window. I had to almost press my face against the window glass to see him-but there he’d sit, just watching, waiting. Normal owl activities, I suppose. One sunny day in spring he left his post and flew up to my open window. He was startling up close-almost overwhelmingly painted and detailed, eyes that stared through me and seemed to glow. Far away he was mysterious, revered, stately-up close he was almost frightening to look at. We stared at each other for a moment-it felt as if we weren't supposed to be here, but I could not look away. His gaze felt almost human. It felt even more human when he spoke to me. “Hello,” he uttered. I dropped my jaw and my water bottle. It rolled toward the window where he sat. I did not move. “You dropped something,” he told me. Our stare did not break as I moved slowly, finally, towards him, to get my bottle and sit on my bed. I sat, slack jawed. “You can talk?” I asked him. “You’re an owl! How are you talking?” “I don’t know,” He replied. “How are you talking?” I almost laughed at such an absurd question, but paused. Then: “Well, I’m, well, a human. We’re supposed to talk.” “Yes,” he said, a tone that sounded almost irritated with the obvious nature of my statement. “But says who? Did someone grant you permission to speak one day, or did you just start?” I mean, he had a point, I guess. I said nothing. “Well, same thing happened to me,” he continued. “I just could. Can.” “Oh.” I finally broke our stare, and looked down at my hands. I almost felt bad for second guessing him, but then remembered the absurdity of my situation and rejected any guilt I felt for holding disbelief that I was having a conversation with an owl. I looked back up, half expecting him to be gone, for me to have made it all up. But there he perched, glowing eyes darting around my room, no longer cutting through me. He spoke again. “So, if we can both talk, what do you think is the difference between you and I?” I had to laugh. “What kind of question is that?” “What do you mean?” “You’re an *owl*, I’m a person. How are you asking what the difference between us is?” He looked back at me. “Thank you for stating the obvious. But I can talk like you, and I can think like you. I can’t drive a car or cook a pot of pasta, but you can’t hunt mice, or fly.” True, owl. “And we look, well, very different,” he continued. “But what is *really* the difference between us? If we have the same brain, what other than our outside makes us different?” “Can all owls talk like you can?” I replied. “Because if they can’t, and it’s just you, then that makes you a very special owl. I’m just a normal person.” He was quiet for a moment. “You have a point.” I expected him to continue, but he did not. I broke the silence before he could fly off. “So they can’t?” I asked again. “You’re the only one that can talk?” “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know any other owls.” A feeling of cold washed into me, and I suddenly wanted to go open the window and give my owl friend a hug. I don’t think he’d have liked it much, but his simple, matter-of-fact declaration of loneliness and alienation instilled a deep ache in me. He must have seen my smile drop, because my internal anguish over the thought of my new friend being all alone in the world was interrupted by his continuing. “But I never have, so I don’t know the difference,” he said. Stoically. “Aren’t you lonely?” I blurted. I felt ashamed for asking him something that seemed so painful to answer or admit. I wanted to take it back but I could not, of course. He seemed unmoved by the question. Nonetheless, I found myself holding my breath, praying he would not fly away before answering me. “I think that I don’t feel lonely because I don’t know any other way,” he finally began. “I just exist in my world and observe and wonder about why I’m here. And if that’s lonely, I guess I just thought that was what life was. And I don’t mind it, not at all. I don’t even wonder too hard, really. Because I think that it’s this way for a reason. I don’t have anything to miss-which I’ve heard isn’t so nice-because I didn’t ever have anything to begin with. So I just have things to wonder about. Nothing taken, nothing to mourn. Just a life to exist in. Which to me, isn’t a bad life. Not at all.” He looked back at me. His eyes seemed to glow a little brighter, now. And then he flew away. I stood up and rushed to the window, but he was already out of sight.