About the work

She had woken that morning with a vague dread about the pigeon, a sense of its singular unluckiness, even though it had visited her windowsill every day for months. It would land with a soft scrape, peck twice at the grit, then fly off before the first pot of coffee was ready. This morning, it stayed. It was still there when she wrapped the last of the smaller boxes, and it was there, a grey smudge against the smeared pane, when she finally looked up from the table. She knows the bird isn’t waiting for a cupcake, but she doesn’t know what it’s waiting for.