Blossom

I was walking past a grim exhibition only I

was invited to. The urban setting dulls the senses.

Brushing against the glass heads of stationary titans,

the sight doesn't go higher than their knees,

carefully steering among the breathing moving targets.

Don't look too closely nor too long. Long are the strides

one takes to cross, to overcome. Put in the headphones

and move across the realm, where your mission is not to

stop or look around, question; to dash, to trot, to trudge

through all of it. It was a pigeon.

On the crossing, its body was reaching towards the patches

of the sky, unobstructed. The wings were clinging to the

torso, stiff. The poppy blooming on its chest seemed morbid. How

I wished it to be a poppy sticking out of his jacket pocket. Maybe

then the violent crow, instead, would try to mug you, were you

alive, were you in that navy blue jacket with a poppy in the pocket.

But I saw a mighty coal-black crow brutally hitting it with its beak,

and another idly standing by. Like a predator, it moved to surround.

(Like darkness surrounds you and me) A step to the side, a wing to the air,

a solid smack — the still body moved an inch. An inch. An inch. An inch.

As if by pinching, they drag it off the road, out of danger, out of the spotlight.

Were you preying or saving dignity? Were you testing the flesh long gone or

showing solidarity? Were you dark hungry souls or tired of standing still?

Who was the culprit, the ultimate evildoer? Who is to blame?

The pigeon, reckless, or sick, or unlucky; the vicious crows, angry

and the last at the lonely funeral; the wheels that touched the pigeon

last; the car that does not know how to caress but rushes, rushes;

the driver that does not look, nor does he see, and rushes, rushes;

the rain that made him late; the job that pays only so much; the rent

that almost steals it all; the narrow roads; unpopularity of public

transportation; urban migration; a gust of wind; the inventors of

the automobile, the engine, the wheel. Will we ever grow dead tired

of seeing deadly blossom? Will we ever stop raging against the dying

of the light? I was walking past a grim exhibition only I was invited to.

The title was death, but the label did not elaborate further.