Jeff Friedman & Meg Pokrass
Homing Pigeon

Nobody knocks on my door, so I knock on my door myself. When no one answers, I enter, a guest in my home. I call out several times, but the windows stare at me with their blue eyes, and my voice seems to ring through the living room. I remove my coat and sit down at the table. Certainly, my host will come down and invite me to have some tea. I stare at all the furry stuffed animals and the photos of cats and dogs, statuettes of foxes and bears, and the sculpture of a howling wolf. She must be some animal lover, I think. Soon I’m talking to the fuzzy dog pillow. “You look lonely, boy,” I say.” After a while, I decide to make my own tea. Surely my host won’t mind. I find the green tea and sniff at the dusty tea tin. I fill the metal ball with leaves and dangle it in hot water for as long as I can stand there. Then I remove it and take my cup of tea into the living room, where I sip it slowly. The hot liquid feels good on my throat and warms me from within. There’s something scuttling over the roof—I imagine the return of a homing pigeon. When I’m finished, I place the cup and saucer in the sink. I conclude that nobody else is here so I put on my coat and scarf, scribble a note to my host, and pin it to the cork board in the kitchen. “For now, I’m taking off,” the note says, “but I’ll be back later when someone is home.”