I Never Learned How To Sew

We are pigeons. Grey birds with the dumb gaze of an American trying to think in miles, and an ugly coat the color of concrete at dusk. You and I, we aren't the metaphors for naivety or worthlessness a comparison with pigeons should entail, we are them in the flesh--- too small bones with too little meat. We fly in a sky that is blue with clouds that are white. We are above everything, not because we're superior, but because it is the only way someone so insignificant can survive. But we don't know that, so we glide home in the wind.

Home is a pile of sticks and bird shit. It reeks of rotting something, distinctly animal and bird in its intensity and neglect. It sits nestled between the window of a fourth floor apartment and an AC's outside unit. A familiar hot blast of wind rages over us as we veer left and settle on the cement ledge. You coo softly. To a human, it would be like every other coo of a pigeon--- same for food and rage and sorrow. To me, it is of love. A love I don't feel as settled into my bones as you do, but I understand it when I see you with your eggs. You're reverent with them, like they're your god. You wobble to them, and sit atop them, ever careful.

It had been a miraculous feat to get you even a mere hour away from your eggs. It was a gentle headbutt, a prickly show of ruffled feathers, a coo followed by another coo followed by another, before you caved in. It is slowly settling into a habit. Not a habit, though, one might say. A periodic thing, then. It is every other day that you cave in.

It has been a week. On every even date, you refuse. On every odd one, the air is crispier and the base nature to be out in the open wins you over. In that moment, as the very gentle breeze feels like life itself, while we're what the universe means us to be-- pathetically stupid and content in our very being--- I make a decision. It doesn't matter what the pattern is supposed to be--- we'll be free tomorrow as well. Even for an hour.

I match your mismatched gait and tuck close to the edge of the nest. The cement is unyielding beneath my feet and resting down feels uncomfortable, but you're in front of me, warm and happy, and I fall asleep.

Morning comes. A thread unravels to the top of a worn tapestry, and marked lines and tiny holes left behind by stitches guide the path to a familiar day. It is warmer. It is even. Do not refuse though, my darling. The fates spin yarns and yarns into important men that become presidents or write books or kiss pretty ladies in movies. They will overlook a small slight, a tiny monumental change in the life of a pigeon. Leave your eggs behind so that when we come back, your love can feel anew.

Our city is like every other city. It has buildings and humans and parks and fountains. In the light, which is the only time the world exists, it is alit with screams. Cars, speakers, people. A time long ago, perhaps in a previous life, this buzz felt like death. It hummed in our blood and reverberated through our skeletons. Now, as much as humanity has evolved to fit the chaos of its own creation, we birds have too. That is why it feels so good to weave overhead the traffic; why it is second nature to duck into narrow alleyways and past balconies of starving families.

This is what we want. A part in the misery because misery is more life that mundanity can ever be. You are beside me, wings spread out, sky in your lungs. If we stopped to rest, I know you would thank me for bringing you, even if we defied an unknown, unfathomable, unreal force.

Our journey is never ending. It loops through the side of an office building and above the lawn of a cat lady filled with cats that come alive when they catch sight of us. It takes us to the playing ground of a small school at the edge of the city. The kids play cricket--- hopping on toes and back on heels, swinging bats over their heads and looking one. A green leather ball zips past, narrowly avoiding me, and you flap wildly. I coo, a laugh this time, and then you join in. We're mid-air, laughing as gravity reclaims the ball and two kids cross each other for the other side of the pitch. Some fists pump in the air and hoots and cheers fill the world. Some pitiful grunts and an angry captain join the symphony. We move forward.

The journey ends at home. The loop closes itself in the distance where a window pane shines. We've been out longer than either of us expected, and the fading orange of the sun on glass beckons us to where we know our home awaits. Exhaustion of the day slows us down, but it feels like a present. When we descend to the edge, it feels the perfect end to the day.

Except it isn't.

What is most notably absent is the odor. Gone is the immediate stench that attacks in its terrible physicality. Then, if you are the pigeon, you notice the lack of your humble abode. The sticks, the shit, the life that you once had tucked away from the world on a cement ledge of an apartment in a city in a country--- all of it is absent. The clinical, very exact smell of phenyl lingers in the air. The hot wind blasts to the left of you, but now its warmth singes. A corner of the pebble heart inside your body feels a blow. Like the ball from earlier did find its mark.

Our eggs. Your eggs. Do their broken shells remain? Do creatures who didn't invent the wheel and didn't understand the importance of the internet get a chance to mourn? Are the emotions we feel as small as our bodies, so even if we feel joy, its smallness is crushed to the sound of whirring blades of an AC? Perhaps emotions are so shortlived in the shorter lives of birds that they have no credibility.

A woman peers through the window. You coo in outrage as shock pushes you over the edge of our small space. I recognize the face, the clefts and peaks etched into the vessel of a worn life. Her hair is dirt brown, pulled up so the light scowl is visible in the swoop of her brows and the pout of her lips. She looks like her offspring, a perky little creature with a toothy grin that has too many gaps to be taken seriously. The little devil had spent hours on end in a day pressed against the glass, lovingly staring at our small family. She had once--- perhaps two or three days ago---- left a shiny golden ring on the edge of our nest. A whole day had passed before her frantic mother had finally found it. I can't help but remain transfixed on the sheen of its thick, golden band now as deft fingers close the drapes on us. Then, it's over.

*************

A tapestry nears its end. A white thread twists and turns in the fabric as it moves its way down. Just near the bottom, a black current seeps into its purity. The Fates frown upon the sudden ugliness that marrs an otherwise unsuspecting creation. They never noticed the sudden shift in the usual stitching pattern until the dark overtook most of it. It was a pigeon, or two pigeons. Maybe it was a crow, or two crows. They debate reworking the patterns, then abandon the effort.

A new tapestry awaits. Her words will flow through the seven continents and rise to the heavens. She will require hardships to build character and personality, but then she'll require happiness. The joy that beings known to history need so that the world knows they're important, and that good things happen to people who are important.

*************

You wail your life away as you try to find your eggs. I tag behind to console you when you inevitably cease your search for your lost kids. We rest on a different ledge of a different building.

Finally, we build a nest on it.