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By Root 396 0

a matter of public interest. Death, a private thing, is making a limited appearance, a February sun. Faces, creased and concerned, peer down at the children and the pigeon. Nearby, a man and a woman exchange whispers. I imagine that they are not speaking French. Her shoes, after all, are too practical. No Parisian woman would stand so unadorned and close to the earth. The woman touches the shoulders of those before her until there are none, except for the boy with the jutting finger, a finger made grotesque by the branch that has extended its natural reach. The woman bends down next to the bird that has lost all memory of flight. Sitting on its folded feet, it warms an egg that it can no longer understand is merely stone. The woman takes off her gloves. The gesture stops time. The world becomes small, and she and the bird are the only ones casting shadows on its spinning surface. I close my eyes but cannot keep them shut, another useless flutter on this winter's day.

The woman cups the pigeon in her hands, a washerwoman's mottled pink, and straightens her body. The expected resistance, the bird's fight for freedom, never comes. She walks down the steps, the pigeon before her, raised like an offering to the snow beds down below. She places the bird on a patch of ground where the snow had melted clean. Her hands continue to cup its body, steadying it for what is to come, warming it like no sun can ever again. The assembly has followed the woman down the steps, and, from where I am sitting, I can see their bodies speaking with uncertainty. Backs turn away and then turn back again. Heads form small circles only to unfurl in wavy lines. Uncertain, I can see, about whether the woman's cupped hands have delivered the last rites, whether they can now resume the day, reclaim the minutes lost to a little death. The girl with the big eyes still has the leaf in her hand, fanning the air before her. The boy with the jutting finger stands with two younger boys by his side. Lessons are being learned. Cruelty passes from one to the other, a not so secret handshake.

I see a sudden ripple of coats and hats. Children are being quickly led away, their small hands covering their mouths, larger hands covering their eyes. The ordinary, city-gray pigeon is again in my line of sight. It is attempting flight, creating a spectacle worse than death. With its breached left wing, it manages only to skim the snow. It flies toward a nearby hedge and hurls its body into a tangle of branches. its feathers catch on thorns and other small curious growths and are lifted up, exposed in shameful ways. The pigeon flaps its wings with a force that shakes the hedge, makes it tremble, startles it with something akin to life. The bird falls back onto the snowy ground. its refusal to die a soft, concerted death is an act thought willful and ungrateful by those assembled. They show their displeasure by pulling their attention away, a recoiling hand. The bird flies again into the branches, confused and exhausted.

I close my eyes, a useless flutter. I open them, and I see you half a world away. I hear fever parting your lips. I feel your shiverings, colorless geckos running down your spine. I smell the night sweat that has bathed you clean.

The woman with the pink mottled hands is the only one who has remained. No one wants to stand so close to desperation. It is too thick in the air. It is naturally invasive, has the dank odor of musty rooms and vacant houses, a distinct taste, tangy and burning on the tongue. The woman should know. She carries desperation with her, soiled into the seam of her skirt, sewn into the lining of her coat. She examines the bird and recognizes the signs, the secret markings of her tribe, and she knows that this will take time. She picks up the pigeon, again a swift wrapping of pink, and walks it up the steps. She walks it past me and lays the bird under the trees, near where the girl with the big eyes had dug up the branch. The woman looks over at me, and we exchange promises. Someone would do the same for me when my day comes, I imagine