Bird.

There's a bird outside the one window in this Brooklyn apartment. Specifically, it's a pigeon. And specifically, it's Prospect Heights, on the very Northwest tip of the park — Prospect Park, if you can believe it.

Anyway, there's this bird that sits outside her window ruining the only thing that's beautiful about her converted two-bedroom — which was essentially a one-bedroom split in half by a partition. It's the kind of partition that separates large classrooms into smaller classrooms. That taupe plastic...thing.

"Her" is Kat Muller. She's thirty. She has a roommate. She has brown hair. It's wavy, but she wants it to be curly. She curls her hair with a large barrel curler from ConAir. She hates that movie. She wishes she didn't waste energy on hate, but she does. She says ones thing, and then normally attaches a qualifying "but." Everyone knows what she's thinking because her face doesn't hide like Mona Lisa's. If she knew I wrote that just then, she'd make a "You're retarded face." She wishes I would say "stupid," but, I didn't and I don't because, frankly, I don't give a shit.

"I" am her roommate, Emily. What a simple name? I put a question mark at the end of that, then I deleted it, put a period and then went back to a question mark. I used the word "what," which should denote that I asked a question. "Should." I love the conditional. I have brown hair too and a soft chin. Boo! Soft chins suck no matter how old you are, but they just keep getting softer with age and fat.

We have lived together since 2007. It's 2014. That's a lot of years. If we were different genders we could apply for Common-law marriage...or be considered for it. I don't really know how that works. I don't even know if marriage equality exists in New York. I like to think that I would know if I lived in, like, Chelsea.

Anyway, that bird. Ugh. That stupid bird. That retarded bird. It comes by every day, and I have never seen it fly. It must though. It walks over from the neighbors every day. It doesn't start the day at our place, or end it there. It's as if it is going to our house for "work." It's there 9am-5pm, and then the F train steams by, and it's out of here. Gone...to be seen from again. Tomorrow at 9am. It's never been late, which to me, is hilarious. If it were, I would expect a verbal apology with words and apologetic hand gestures.

I've named him Bird. Sometimes less is more. My mother says things like that to me. I imagine her needle-pointing onto shitty pillows when we talk on the phone. I'm from Michigan: the birthplace of crappy pillows and the best trees. Whenever I'm home in Michigan I feel naked. I'm convinced it's the crispness of the air. It cuts straight through clothing, no matter the amount of hipster layering I attempt.

It's not really fair that the only window we have goes straight into Kat's section of the apartment, which is just barely a step-up from a cardboard box. It's better in the winter, but not in the summer. "It's" meaning the apartment. In the summer it's a boiling cesspool of my and Kat's sweat. I mean, no it's not an underground garden unit, which basically is just asking for a rat to be your unofficial nonpaying roommate — but it's not a far cry. The first time we had an issue with the apartment, I cried. I never thought of myself as a crier, or an emotional person, but when it happened, it was so disproportional that I came to the conclusion that I am an emotional person, I just don't know when's an appropriate time to let it out, so I hit this tipping point, and then I was toast. Burnt toast that's no good.

I'm looking at Bird right now, and I'm wondering where he calls home. I'm wondering who's waiting for him to get back at 5:30pm. I'm not wondering how long his commute is. Everywhere in New York is a half hour. Or should be. Whatever comes first.

Maybe I'll move back to Michigan. There's birds in Michigan.