The Pigeon Had Somewhere to Be (It Was Here)

November second.

He arrived at 8:14 in the morning. I know because I looked at my phone to confirm that this was, in fact, happening. He was a completely standard city pigeon, grey, round, iridescent at the neck in a way that would be beautiful if he were anywhere else, and he had placed himself on the outer windowsill with the unhurried authority of someone who had already paid the deposit.

I want to be clear that I did not immediately take a photo. I first attempted to solve it. I tapped on the glass. He blinked. I tapped again, this time with what I felt was appropriate firmness. He adjusted his weight from one foot to the other in a way that communicated exactly zero alarm. I tried making a sound, not a shoo, exactly, more of a sustained exhalation meant to imply consequences, and he looked at me with the dead-eyed patience of someone who has heard worse. He was standing directly in front of the letterpress card, which felt almost personal. I do not know how a pigeon communicates contempt but I am fairly certain I witnessed it.

minute eight. he is still there.

By minute eight I had accepted the situation and gone back to my coffee. Gerald's vine was doing that morning thing where it catches the light just right and I had the thought that the pigeon was just another thing on the windowsill now, temporarily, the way all things on that windowsill are temporarily and then suddenly permanent. He was not permanent. He left at 8:25 without acknowledgment or ceremony, in the direction of the building across the street, presumably to do this to someone else. The letterpress card was fine. The photographs were fine. The small object from Carol was fine. Nothing was disturbed.

I stood there for another minute after he left, which I think says more about me than about him.