Returning the Rest(less)

Recently walking a lot more like I used to, intentionally and with enough time to walk at my own pace. Yesterday, I leave home and not so far down the pavement sidewalk, the path I usually slip through to cross the Main road safely, is a sombre scene. Immobilized, beak and eyes face-down in the soil, wings unusually flaccid, there is a rest(less) pigeon. Clearly, this creature took its death straight to its’ chest, and I am only a witness in the aftermath by virtue of my footsteps.

Strolling a lot more, like how I used to when I would feel restless, stomach burning without an appetite. While I walk along this morning, the same pigeon lays there rest(less). The creature’s death is still in the same place as before, but now sprawled openly, its’ stomach facing the sky shining through the branches over-arching a kaleidoscope of leafy green.

There are parts missing from this creature, but nothing is overtly dismembered. I pause to see whether the rest(less) pigeon is still motionless with its nose in the sand. There are a lot of parts missing, and it seems like the rest(less) body has been rearranged, but this is still a scene of its death. Its’ body has been tampered with, but within the confines of this slip-through path.

Walking a lot, so much that the shine has returned to my eyes again, the shine only my mother’s children hold. My take of the rest(less) pigeon is scrawled on the insides of my jugular. Once I have concluded that this creature could only have been moved by force, the fact of its’ death abstracting its’ consent, I want to cry and decide to continue walking.

As I walk away, the rest(less) scene sits in my throat, and the air claws at me for release. I walk behind a woman and toddler, the child swallowed up by an oversized school blazer and heavy shoes. Half the woman’s height, too little to fit into school shoes, the toddler looks to the woman, chin up and neck stretched, as though she is the sky itself.

I find rest here in this frame. I begin to feel the scene of rest(less)ness fleeing from my insides, leaving an imprint, but at the very least there is release. The wind stops clawing and kisses my cheek. This rest(less) pigeon, caged by its death in the site of remembrance that sits in the bellows of my chest, returns to the sky.