Towards a Poisoned Canal

A pigeon sits on a lonely stoop watching a traffic of geese fly overhead. This street smart bird that races after busboys who discard perverse amounts of barely touched food in garbage cans and curbs, knows that speed means a meal and waiting is death, as lingering gulls circle overhead. It coos to its lover who sweetly coos back, before she springs and wings towards poisoned canal. Dead fish float in the autumn breeze between hovering ducks and sewage pulp. This was how the day began; a seamless comingling of beautiful ugliness with sparks of sunlight teasing through pollution flame clouds. Hillary thought she’d heard a cricket the night before — between the humming of the air conditioner and the snoring of her husband, but cancelled the thought; dismissing it as fantasy.

Sighing herself up and out of the unpleasant warmth of her bed, she admonished herself for sleeping so late. 

“Well, looky here, Sleeping Beauty has finally awoken,” said her husband Glen.

“I was waiting for Prince Charming, but he didn’t show up. Guess that means I have to settle for you,” she replied, narrowing the space between them until they were close enough to kiss. The moment passed without affection and they continued their morning routines talking endlessly about nothing in particular.

Later, after they’d given each other a perfunctory kiss and walked in separate directions down the same street, Hillary saw a dead pigeon and her mate cooing beside her. The scene stopped her cold, even as other city workers plowed past without cognizance that there was more to life than rushing to the next meeting or catching the next train. Some admonished her for standing there, but she was beyond them; lost in the sight and sound of a truly broken heart.

She heard so many things in that lonely coo, such as “Why,” “Please don’t leave me,” “I want to die” and “I love you.” She couldn’t move; didn’t want to move, it was all too much to absorb until a garbage truck drove by and crushed the dead bird flat. 

The horror of the moment forced her to remember herself and the time, even as she watched the other bird fly away.

I suppose I should congratulate myself for never allowing myself to love someone that much, she thought after finally arriving at work where she spent her day finagling deals that would be forgotten before five.

On the way home, she contemplated taking another route to avoid seeing what was there, but remembering that she and Glen had a function to attend that evening, she took her regular route instead. She tried to avoid it, not wanting to see what she assumed was there, but curiosity forced her to look. By now the bird had been run over so many times that all that remained were some crushed bones, feathers and a single talon reaching out to something that wasn’t there. But Hillary’s focus was elsewhere. She looked around for the other bird; even tried to pick it out of group of birds nearby, but it was gone.

“I knew it! I knew you’d abandon her!” said Hillary forgetting herself as tears welled up in her eyes. “It’s all pointless. This whole existence is pointless. We’re born, we live and we die, and for what? We’ll be extinct with no one left to remember us, and for what?”

By the time she got home, her tears had dried enough to conceal her emotions from Glen, who rushed her in and out of her dressing room to put on just the right dress, so that they could make an appearance at a party neither one of them wanted to attend. Even though time had passed, and she’d washed her face before applying another mask of make-up, Hillary could still feel the salt trails of her tears on her face.

“I want to go home,” she whispered in Glen’s ear.”

“Not yet, babe. You know how the boss likes me to give the hands-on approach to new clients.”

Hours later after they’d returned home feeling beaten down and triumphant, Hillary pushed Glen’s hand away after he tried to syphon some lingering residue of the image she’d created for that evening’s festivities, and fondle her.

“Still waiting for Prince Charming?” he grumbled turning over and away.

She sat in silence through the night, listening for crickets.

*****

On her way home from work the next day, Hillary passed by the spot where the bird had been. Now there was nothing left at all. It was as if everything she had seen and been moved by, hadn’t occurred. Then she heard it, the same sad coo she’d heard before. She circled around trying to see where it perched until as if wanting to make itself known, the bird flew down to the very spot where his mate had been.

*****

“I love you,” Hillary said to Glen during dinner that evening.

“What brought this on?” he asked.

“I just wanted you to know, that’s all,” said Hillary until a long silent lapse imbued the moment with something dark. “Do you love me?”

Glen didn’t reply, he wasn’t the sort to reply to a question like that; which was the excuse she had fed herself on from their first “hello” until now. She changed the subject to something she didn’t care about and smiled as if nothing mattered, while remembering the simplicity of a perfect love lost on a cold city street.