The Sign

It was a Tuesday morning and the bird shit on the top of my pack of cigarettes suggested that a bird had shat on my pack of cigarettes.

This, I thought, must be a sign.

That afternoon, I shared a handicap loveseat on the subway with a fashionable, thirty-something woman.

I figured, why not tell her the shit story, why not have a warm moment with a fellow human-being? Maybe she could use it later, say, to show off at a cocktail party:

"...I assure you it was a female. Obviously not a New Yorker," she'd boast, the Chardonnay kissing the rim of her glass with each emphatic gesture. Whatever.

As expected, after telling her my story and showing her the dried shit on my cigarettes (it must be a sign), she darted her eyes about the train car for several moments, visibly uncomfortable that I had the gumption to address her on the subway.

In the end, she said nothing. She pursed her lips and stared down at our feet.

I didn't mind. I turned back to myself, settled into the seat, and imagined the two of us, right then, praying side-by-side in an empty church somewhere - I for her, and she for her mother, or maybe for rain -

when suddenly, she erupted from our subway seat as a filthy, New York pigeon. Swooping down, she perched on my shoulder, and murmured, to everyone, "I'm Sorry."