La Voz de Galicia – November 24, 2023 →
Today a pigeon crashed against my window. I was sitting at my table, writing on this computer, and suddenly, PUM! a heavy thud and a smashed pigeon. I live on the fifth floor, and I could not look out the window to see what happened to her. I could not go downstairs to the building’s doorway to see if I could save her. I remained there amazed, thinking about the pigeon and the blow, and on the fact that in the twenty years that I have lived in this apartment, nothing like this had ever happened before. And then, I entered into that labyrinth without sense where I sometimes get myself, in the labyrinth of irrational thoughts. Perhaps the pigeon was a sign, perhaps it would be best not to leave the house today, because the bird was sure to bring bad luck. I thought about this many times (perhaps due to imagination) and I was incapable of shaking off the feeling, so I decided, irrationally, that I would not leave the house all day, just in case. Until Bimba, with one of those simple yet determined barks, reminded me that my previous decision did not go along with her plans, and that her walk was more important than my new superstition.
So we went out and walked for a couple of hours, and nothing happened. And when we arrived at the building’s doorway, I began searching the middle of the sidewalk for the remains of the suicidal pigeon. And we combed the area well, but neither Bimba nor I could find any proof of its death. And just in the same way that a day becomes gray, it suddenly turns the same color as the four-leaf clover that my mother had gifted me and that I had laminated and kept as a bookmark. The same clover that I lost yesterday when I left to read in the park, and the same clover that I found today while I was looking for the remains of a pigeon to whom nothing had happened when it crashed against my window.
