Scarf it down

Sometimes I wonder why I am still in this city and I will see a pigeon with a wing broken and its bone sticking out and its wobbling into traffic and I rush to save it only to be greeted by a man from Bulgaria, a man with an accent like a muffler and a moustache that obscures both his lips, and he says together we will save this bird and I smile, smile more than I have in a while, and he picks it up carefully, aware of the wing exposed, like a child, cradling it with a ruby scarf he removed from his neck, revealing a little gold chain with a cross and a heart and some kind of locket that glints in the city twilight, and I think he could be a wonderful father, nursing each small thing into some grand existence, and then he smashes the pigeon’s head against the cement. He does it again. A third time.

Saved, he says.

I walk over the brains as he places the scarf back on his neck, tying it twice tightly.