Where Did the Pigeon Go?

I stepped out and met a silence shaped like a wing — whole, unbroken, waiting.

Not scattered feathers like afterthoughts —

a full wing, from socket to tip, gray washed with darker edges, as if graphite had been pressed into the air.

It lay near the curb, beneath the S-bend of an overpass that even locals avoid after dark.

Rainwater pooled at the drain; a torn leaflet clung to the wet concrete.

A vending machine hummed softly behind me, its drinks lit by pale white light.

Convex mirrors glinted faintly at the corner.

Utility poles stood in rows, cables drooping like tired arms.

Somewhere, the chime of a distant crossing bell echoed, thin and fragile.

No body.

No sound of impact.

No sign of struggle.

Only the wing.

---

I had just stepped outside — door shut, shoes on. Ten steps, maybe eleven.

The air tasted metallic, like the breath of a storm waiting to be exhaled.

Beneath that, the faint trace of burnt insulation from the wires overhead.

It matched my shoes — New Balance 996s, gray on gray. Nearly the same length.

For a moment, it looked like a missing pair, like a part of me discarded without notice.

It didn’t seem torn.

No violent end.

It seemed left behind — like a forgotten offering at the base of a shrine where no one prays anymore.

Or a message I couldn’t read. Or wouldn’t.

Dried blood at the joint.

The feathers clung to the asphalt like reluctant punctuation at the end of a sentence no one wanted to write.

They didn’t stir with the breeze; they shifted only slightly, as if rehearsed into stillness — like the dead things cities are built on.

---

Early that morning, a garbage truck had come and gone.

Two workers in blue uniforms moved with quiet precision, lifting the bags, placing them carefully inside.

When a piece of tissue floated down, one of them bent to pick it up, tucking it away without a word.

The street returned to silence, clean and orderly, as if nothing had ever been left behind.

Pigeons.

I’d always seen them as part of the town’s fixtures — convex mirrors, painted guardrails, utility poles with cables looping overhead.

Gray on gray. Occasional movement. Occasional mess.

But that wing —

it felt familiar.

---

Was it one of those that gathered under the overpass?

Ten, maybe more. Pecking at cracks, circling, tilting heads.

Sometimes they’d approach, blink once — Got anything?

I never did.

At dusk, they’d line the cables — hieroglyphs of balance.

One would take off, the rest shift.

The line swayed — syntax made of wings, a sentence that no longer meant what it once did.

I’d watched them as I watched cracked railings — present, unnoticed, part of the city’s syntax.

But now I wondered:

What if I’d known this pigeon?

They say pigeons can live twenty years.

What if this was like the man who arranges bikes at the parking lot?

The woman who tends the corner flowers?

The café staff I exchanged bows with but never words?

How many times had I crossed paths with this one?

How many times had I not seen it?

Suddenly the wing seemed not discarded, but wounded — a familiar injury.

---

Three days passed.

No one-winged pigeon.

No trace of change.

Only a gap in my sight, pigeon-shaped.

A hollow where awareness fell in.

The flock still gathered, but skirted that absence, as if they too felt the gap.

Maybe disasters make things visible.

Like when a mirror shatters at a corner, and only then do you realize it had always been there.

We don’t see what’s always present.

We can’t. We’d drown.

Cooking, bathing, sleeping, laundry.

Emails unanswered. Coffee left to cool.

That’s life.

We move on.

But the wing stays.

I thought of moving it. My hand hovered, felt the warmth of the asphalt through the air.

I didn’t.

It stayed, exactly where it waited.

Maybe it was never about the wing.

Maybe something else disappeared —

something I used to be, before I dared to look.