The Song of a Mourning Dove

The day the birds started falling was the day I quit my job. 

I heard a thump hit my window and watched as the bird slid down, as birds do. I felt sad for the bird but so was the way of the world and the way of glass windows. I pushed the bird from my mind and resumed filling out the day's crossword but then another thump, again and again and again. Birds hit the ground, the windows, the trees. I looked in horror as they poured and poured from the sky. The house sparrow's gray crown fell with him. The cooing of the mourning dove rose into despair then silence. And the American crow, big and proud with iridescent sheen, what would he think of America now?

The birds kept drenching the city and as I watched their numbers grow I wondered how I never noticed that many birds before. Were they hiding in the clouds? Or had I simply never taken the time to see them? 

The sounds of my office suddenly returned to my consciousness and I realized that I was the only one staring at the chaos outside. The clicking of keyboards and slow hum of the water cooler didn’t stop for falling birds and neither, it seemed, did my coworkers. Had they not seen the birds? Did they not care? 

I tried to focus back on my screen but the letters blurred, once I had seen those birds falling, it was hard to look away for long. I typed into my search bar…

“Raining birds” Nothing

“Raining birds NYC” Nothing

“Birds falling from sky in New York City” Nothing

“Millions of birds fall to their death from the sky in New York City… today” My shock turned into frustration as it seemed the rest of the world was keen to ignore this miracle of nature and natural disaster. This could be classified as a natural disaster, yes? 

I stood up and walked to one of the floor to ceiling windows that spanned our workspace. Gently placing my hand on the window I switched my focus between it and the falling birds outside. Not hallucinating? Yes I think not. 

“Can you take your hand off the window? It was cleaned yesterday and fingerprints make me antsy.” Caught off guard I turned to my supervisor and smiled.

“Well it looks like there are a little bigger fish to fry right now or… birds to fry.” She squinted at me and then at the scene in the window behind.

“Ah, that, I don’t see why that should concern you.” A nervous laugh escaped my lips at her response. But she didn’t laugh with me.

“Is that not concerning to you?” She cut me off-

“There is nothing you can do about it, or me, or any of us. But you can do your work. I don’t pay you to look at birds.”

Stomach churning, eyes watering, it was all so overwhelming, a bird hit the window behind me. Suddenly every sound was louder. A man told a woman about his new apartment in Soho, it’s quaint and rent is only 1200 a month. Somebody spilled their water and it splished away from their computer but the room still rang with bothered groans of inconvenienced people. The sound of heels on a tile floor, walking to the bathroom not to pee but to scroll on her phone and then reapply her lipstick. The apartment in Soho adds ten minutes to his commute. The water ruined a freshly printed invoice. The girl ran into her friend on the way to the bathroom so now instead of scrolling on her phone she will gossip. Does the apartment have its utilities covered? Where is a paper towel? Did you hear about the guy from accounting? The sounds of every day, the sounds I live in, grew louder and louder. But the loudest sound was the silence. Deafening. It must’ve been where the birds used to sing, though I never noticed. 

“I don’t get paid to look at birds.” I smiled at my supervisor and looked around the office I had worked in for three years. “More people should get paid to look at birds.” With that I hope she understood. I walked a way, passed the wilted weed of a house plant in the corner, the lady at reception who always smiled but talked about people behind their backs, the man tripping over the leg of a chair that hadn’t been pushed in. A song played quietly in the background but I couldn’t understand the words. I could only hear the melody and it guided me out.

Stumbling onto the street I was almost excited, these people must acknowledge the birds. A man walked past me in a charcoal suit, a classic business man, phone in one hand, briefcase in the other, hair cropped close to his head. The birds seemed to avoid him. He glided through the scene oblivious, consumed with the person on the other end of the line. Two people walked in my direction, one had a dog on a leash. The people were mid fight, something about one of them going on a trip without telling the other one? They didn’t notice the dog's whimpers as it looked at the birds on the ground and the sky where they continued to fall from. That’s when I noticed a woman sitting next to my old office building. She sat on a blanket of frayed edges and stains. Her clothes and skin showed her age, her eyes showed her struggles, and her smile at me showed her understanding. She looked at the birds with me. I remembered every time I walked past her into work. Trying not to make eye contact, if I didn’t see her then I could not feel guilty. But now she saw me and she seemed to be the only one. She saw the birds, they didn’t avoid her like the business man or the people arguing in the street. They fell on her blanket and in her face. Somehow I knew this wasn’t her first time watching the birds fall. They had been falling for a long time. 

A mourning dove fell in front of us but before it could hit the ground it flew. It stayed between us for a moment till it peacefully reached the ground and tottled a way. Mourning doves mate for life and coo with the rising sun. I felt a fresh quiet sense of hope, the helplessness remained but as I walked to Line 8 heading home I realized I may see the birds falling for the rest of my life but now I also hear them sing. Their song gets me out of bed every morning.