it was late. or it was early. it was somewhere in between. the sky had taken on that scared chicken look with clouds and everything inside out. Sometime later I would recall this as a red-letter-day. The shutters tight; a hoot a holler. No one was in the mood to look...

I have never been there, but I have been through there several times. a few as a child and maybe one or two as an adult. who remembers such things. never even tasted the ground, only smelled the air: something like sulpher: old steel towns still reek of it. the sky goes orange at night from the blast furnaces, still.

from the window you can watch an old man make his way up the street. he’s always there; walking but making no progress. you want to wrap your wings around him, and shuffle him into your cage, which you have just now noticed blooming in the centre of the room.