In the early morning, before the sun had fully risen and begun to warm the
earth, Daniel stood equanimously beneath an ash tree. He was allergic, or at least he
thought so, but paid no mind to the itchiness in his throat or the swelling in his eyes.

 

He had gotten up early that morning, his body teeming with a surplus of life
and incapable of sleep or an idle moment. He was a real man, one with bones and
skin and muscle underneath it all, that knew his self couldn’t be contained by his
body. As a child, he would wake before his parents could properly fall asleep, and go
about the house making a mess of things and then cleaning it all back up. His mother
would wake up not long after him and chastise his earliness, saying that no person is
meant to be awake as long as he is, that life was too cruel and empty to be lived in
too much. But young Daniel kept waking up early and sleeping late, relishing in the
extra moments of life that would have otherwise become pent up in his body and
slowly decay there, leaving its toxic decomposed flesh inside him.

 

But now he has grown older and his body has grown larger, providing more
living space for life and its decaying toxins to nest in and find their homes. When his
body stopped growing vertically, his being began to revolt against him by silently
eating at the contents of his heart and ejecting its waste into his blood, leaving him
puffy and irritable. So he began to eat more and get fatter, bulking up his meat so
more life could live happily in his flesh and drown out all the rot that slowly built up
in him.

 

Daniel looked out at the park, over all the places of its body. It was cold and
empty from the night, metal poles and fencing poked out of the ground like steel
bones cutting through the brittle air. It was still too early for children to be playing
and the world was too passive during the winter to simulate their laughter. From the
light of the sad hint of the sun, Daniel could see in the shadows of ladder rungs and
monkey bars their faces, smiles, the future of life, all buried in fresh snow,
suffocating.

 

Daniel stepped closer to the shadows, intent on brushing away all the snow
and letting their passionate lungs breathe, when a small movement caught his eye.
Beneath the slide where children slid was a little pigeon tucked away where there
was no snow to chill its blood. It looked at Daniel with wide, empty eyes full of
indifference to the world. Daniel knelt down and approached the bird slowly, waiting
for the animal to scare and fly off to its family. Instead it hopped sadly towards him,
its face now taking a tired, beggardly demeanor, needling through the puffiness of
his coat and into his heart.

 

Daniel extended his finger softly, like God, and let the pigeon rub its neck against the warmness of his flesh. He began to pet it, rubbing against the sleek
feathers on the creature’s neck, feeling its insides through its outsides.

 

Hidden in the cavities of its burnt and abandoned eyes were smoldering ashes
stamped into the ground. A herd of children stomped on it in circles, kicking up soot
and ash from the earth, blocking the sun from warming their bodies and giving them
life. As they stomped, their blood began to freeze and they started to slow down,
tired and viscous. Dust settled and the sun reemerged, touching their skin and
drawing the frost from their flesh. Reinvigorated with love, the kids began to laugh
and stomp once again. There, living in the pigeon’s eyes, was his dead mother
bleeding profusely. Daniel thought of whether she had made any effort to bleed or
stomp when she was still alive, but couldn't imagine her doing so. Her body just filled
with toxins, without any means of removal, until she stiffened up and passed.

 

Time slipped past quickly until the bird emitted a silent coo and closed its
eyes, perching itself on its stomach on the hard snow. Daniel kept petting the pigeon
until he couldn’t feel his fingers from the cold anymore and stood up. Looking at his
phone, he noticed he had lost track of time and his work had slipped past him, so he
rushed off to not be any later than he was. Perhaps he could keep his job.