The Bird Had Somewhere to Be

April seventh. I set the timer on a shelf by reflex, the way you do when something is too quiet and specific to let go without a record. The pigeon was just sitting there on the ledge outside the kitchen window, and Simone had heard it before I did, she was already at the glass by the time I registered the sound, arms crossed, head slightly tilted, completely absorbed. I stood next to her with my coffee going cold in both hands and we did not say anything for what felt like a full minute but was probably twenty seconds. The bird did not care.

Simone eventually said something about how it was judging us and I said I thought it had already finished and moved on to indifference, which is worse. We were both too tired to be funnier than that. It was one of those early Tuesday mornings where neither of us had much to report and the pigeon filled the silence better than we would have. I did get a close shot of the windowsill with the bird soft beyond the glass, the cord sitting off to one side the way it does, the two photographs, the letterpress card, and for a second the arrangement looked like it had always expected a visitor just outside it.

she outlasted me. I went for more coffee.

Eventually I turned around to get more coffee and Simone stayed at the window. That was the frame I didn't expect, her still there, me already done. The route acquired a second corner two months ago and I am still not writing about it as its own thing, and the Portland tab closed in March the same quiet way the class tab closed last July, and sometimes a morning is just a pigeon and a friend who outlasts you at the window, and that is enough to put down.