Kate Welsh

In June, Pigeons

We hadn’t been paying attention to them, really—
just rapping on the windows and shooing them off
when their cooing turned annoying. But one
bright Sunday their mess became unignorable

and I persuaded him that it was time. Together
we wiped the windows, sprayed the patio furniture,
unearthed a dusty bucket of beers from when
we were people who had house parties,

and I swept white droppings from the floor
he never finished. Pigeons usually have pitiful nests:
a few sticks thrown together, a few feathers, torn-up
old receipts, strips of plastic bags. But the one he found

in the patio corner was solid, careful, cared for,
and in it we found a single egg. We debated
what to do, read up on pigeon laying practices
(usually a pair of chicks, usually hatched

in three weeks’ time), and we guessed how long
they’d been out there cooing and decided
it must be an abandoned dud, a brother or sister
already hatched and gone, this one destined

to stink in the upcoming heat. So he took it all
to our building’s dumpster, both of us feeling sensible
and guilty. To warn off any other hopeful parents
we hung up strands of silver ribbon, which snapped

and twisted in the wind, caught disorienting city light.
Late that night we sat on the couch watching something
stupid on TV, then heard the cooing return, softly.
The pigeons’ talons clicking on the now-clean terrace

searching for what we had so calmly and certainly destroyed.

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Born and raised along the Mississippi River, Kate Welsh now lives in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a BA from Barnard College and an MFA from Warren Wilson College, where she was the Rona Jaffe Graduate Fellow in 2021. Her work can be found in or is forthcoming from Grist, Variant Lit, Epiphany, SWWIM Every Day and West Trade Review, among others. She is the co-founder/co-editor of The Swannanoa Review. www.kate-welsh.com.