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game of puttering and cooing. When he stops fol- lowing her along the ledge, she waits, looking back coyly. Can pigeons be coy? Once you went to a Radio- head show with your high school boyfriend and you thought you were giddy with attraction but it turned out you just had a fever. There was a woman danc- ing in electric purple, she must’ve done a tab of acid because she moved like a hyper-fast aerobics angel. When you saw her you collapsed. Your boyfriend asked why you didn’t dance but you were mesmer- ized, temperature climbing, and he piled you into the car. You fell asleep on the way home. Is that attraction?
II
You met a witch selling sausage rolls once. She either had a massive gap between her front teeth or she was missing some central megatooth. Her hair was white despite her not really being that old and her eyes were glassy and losing pigment. You wore your girlfriend’s brown bowler hat like the black one of your grandfather who you never got to meet but his hat somehow ended up in your little-girl dress-up box. The witch said she wore hats like that in the
70s and called you and your girlfriend star children. Three Times, she said drumming her fingers in the air. Three Times This Week You Will Hear of Your Pineal Gland. The Seat of Your Soul. You laughed and she told you the reason the US military buzzes your hair off is because the hair contains your psychic roots. She said that’s why great heroes had long flowing hair. She told you that the fluoride in your toothpaste and water is another way they dumb you down. She told you We All Have Abilities. She said to you and your girlfriend that she is a non-commercial psychic who uses her gifts to find missing and mur- dered people and about the time she tipped off the police about the car of a boyfriend who killed a girl’s mother in Oregon. You’re reincarnated to clean all this pigeon shit up, she said. She sent you on your way. You didn’t look back in case she wasn’t there anymore, and you knew not to ask her name.
III
You get up and close the window.
L Scully (they/them) is a queer writer and double Capricorn currently based in Madrid, Spain.
“You’re thinking about that date you
went on in Baltimore. The one right after you get out of the psych ward. ”
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