Preface: I'm anxious over nuclear war.
Grey rumblings accursed the vast sun-dim sky to a parking lot not far down from the clouds.
A rotten jambalaya of ambience encompassed the lot; tumble weed scraping cars, the remnants of live electrical lines dancing in the irregularly regular gusts; the last steps and breathe of a haggard woman like the end of a dark symphony, BOM BOm Bom , exhale; then cheesegrater coos and sundry clicks of famished pigeons echoing from the concaved wall and rubble
Out from under the F OD CEN ER side of the despoiled grocer/everythingelse, they cluster outside. Batten lumber flightless and as doorknob sparks the delta outpour breaks from the rubbing of sores where the fallout had sundered grey feathers off several times over.
Hopping, squawking and curiously pecking, they circumvent the lot towards what would be brunch. Over constant uneven glass and debris, the pack parallels the blockade of vehicles. Occasionally tips of beaks tap a trampled piece of bone, most would be useless.
Half a dozen yards from the rubble exit along the wall of wreck, a suburban is wedged up and into a handicap pole and sedan, an acute angle. Frictionless, they shuffle underneath.
A pigeon prariedogs the egress, and although a flake of ash once adrift now corrupts his left eye, as it resembles a sliver of cooked garlic bleeding puss, his right sclera scans landscape up, across, and left, half as eater, half as tobeeaten. From the enclosed border of conglomerate vehicle outward in an arc to the leafless treeline, the parking lot is a veritable wasteland. Aside from the backwash of noise, the outskirts were trash carpets and a strangling isolation the aviary clan has yet to know.
A slow rolling russian thistle skulks upon the ash and old blood smeared corduroy pants. As greenless as a green light could be, pigeon to pigeon gravity momentums the bobbing head train. Instinct countered visceral feeling when attempting blitz flight only to rupture the volley of sores upon sores residing in the birds’ armpits. Chainsaw-in-a-drainage-ditch cries remind those grounded against such action without ceasing advance.
As a wartime deceased, they cover her like a blanket. Early birds seized the head and/or hands, as per usual, the rare parts not covered by an onion’s worth of layers. As for the rest, regardless of sex, pigeons with lacerated, chipped beaks ripped and spelunked into the mound of crusty garment. Slowly as clothing gave way to ripe flesh; a changing of the guards; sharp beaked pigeons removed their spastic eyes’ glue from the treeline and adjoin the wave of grey bodies consuming.
Perched upon their leftovers, content toes dig into the soft sparsely haired grey flesh of their maternal provider and face their only front; a half charred line of foliage bone bridging the remains of the city. There, a skeleton feline, too weak to spring, waits patiently for starvation or a chance to lap blood its body needs.
Ground shook reminiscence. Eaters’ concentration. Stalker’s desperation.
A cloudy light billows behind the oregons sending pigeons frantic with bloody flaps of wing across and into the safety of the thick darkness beyond the rubble entrance. The long defeated cat drags itself into the gutted city for a hole to rest in.
The haggard buffet’s eyeball reflects the yellow and orange candescence fight the grey neutrality unaware fear doesn’t come from the sunshine but the rainfall after.
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