Glass Nest

The winding spiral staircase of the black stone cathedral ascends into the dizzying air. Heads spin, legs ache. Hands sweat a layer of cold metallic sweat as they drag up the handrail. Every window (narrow, dusty paned) sets a scene a little higher than the last. The red rooftops diminish. The horizon expands.

Nestled in one such narrow and dusty paned window, a pigeon. Feathers black-grey like volcanic rock, orange-red eye swivelled round to see its beholder. Frozen between the glass and the narrow stone hole that opens onto the sky, like an animal in a zoo, or an artefact in an exhibition. It shifts, nervously, and reveals beneath it a single egg, startling white. Whiteness such that its existence astonishes. Purity borne from drab filth. 

The pigeon's nest is safe from predators, safe from wind and rain. How shocked it must have been, to find its security false. To be regarded by humans, closer than they've ever been, separated only by glass. To have your private bubble of safety and quiet suddenly cross-sectioned, exposed like the film in the back of a camera. 

I felt sorry for my invasion of privacy yet I couldn't help but stare. If I could, I'd come back daily. Watch the egg crack. Watch it feed its pink and bawling fledglings. Watch them grow, sprout feathers, fly away.

We are addicted to the overexposure of others.