You’re Allowed to Leave

You’re Allowed to Leave

Rhea Johnson

It is impossible to shake off the pigeons from their dogged grasp onto everything, the loft, the terrace, the roof- the loft back again. That blue-grey huddle, that wooden whir always wheeling. Nothing can make it give, to leave and not look back. Haven’t I chased enough ones to know that a stone would only send them so far as to half-moon right back? Have I not wondered so much more if they wouldn’t, just for once in a long while, surf the wind that blows or perch on a branch or ledge, not for anything else, but simply because they liked the way it caught the sun? Is that what I should have done too?