"In the time it takes to squint, the speck at the horizon line explodes, sprouts wings, and quickly grows to the ripe size of the bird I love. Gray doesn’t hesitate. She doesn’t flaunt her talent in a spiraled landing. My hand, already in the glove, extends as if I’m signaling for a left turn from a bicycle, as Gray angles her body for the descent. At this speed, the tips of her claws have to spike into the rawhide of my glove the way a snake’s fangs might, otherwise her landing would end in a crash. Her eyes are wide, feathers jittering, and there is the expected note tied where I’d tied the last." |
Portrait of Mr A. Flood's Johnnie Peters by Edward Henry Windred
(1937)
Somewhere inside the heart of this machine, a carrier pigeon blinks as her little leather hood is removed. She dreamed of the flight before I asked her to fly, before I reached inside her cage, before I tied these first lines of writing to her foot. The color of her feathers inspired her name. I call her Gray.
I love her.
Yes, that’s right; I’m in love with the bird that sleeps in a cage that is shaped like a heart, buried behind the keys of my typewriter.
This morning begins like thousands of others have before. I stand with Gray perched on my shoulder, on the rooftop of my apartment building, with the darkness of last night receding. Together we look out over the city. With my latest words already tied to her foot, she senses a shift in the wind and releases her grip from my shoulder. Then she flaps her wings until she catches a current of air, which flows above and beyond the building ledge. Gray glides away from me, attached to the wind, soaring out over the landscape of Brooklyn. She is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking in the distance. I watch until she has flown far enough away that she resembles a grain of sand or the head of a pin, until even that minuscule hint of her image finally fades.
Somehow she knows there is a rooftop out there where another bird-lover awaits her arrival with an outstretched glove. Gray knows more than I do. She knows where my words need to go, and for that I am eternally grateful. I’ve written for what feels like centuries already; and still I have no idea who has been reading these daily typed pages. This unnamed reader may be compiling them into a scrapbook, for all I know, or burning them in a fireplace. Where my words end up depends on the flight of this bird, and each morning when she carries them from me, all I am sure of is that someone unties the scroll from her leg before she returns.
I kneel, with my elbows resting on the ledge, waiting for her. Many hours have passed since she leaped from my shoulder.
The night finally shows signs of surrender, black receding into folds of blue, and the sun takes its chef’s knife and fillets the city rooftops with a severe yellow blade. I strain my eyes, squinting, until I find a tiny speck within the sunlight, a slow-moving bullet flying from the horizon, and the bullet has wings. She shoots past my head, sharply circles me, and then lands gracefully on my hand. Her wings pull toward her body and counter-flap, twitching slightly as she settles down on my rawhide glove. I notice something out of the ordinary, as compared to all those thousands of mornings she has returned to me.
This morning, Gray has carried my words away from me, and already some other bird messenger has sent a reply. Someone has tied his or her own message, for me to read, just above Gray’s claw.
“I am you, fifty years from now,” the note says.
I read it over again. “I am you, fifty years from now.” I can practically hear the old man’s voice, my voice, speaking the words. My voice… fifty years from now… My skin tingles as though I’ve suddenly been covered by hundreds of quick-slithering lizards. I read the note again and again, believing more and more with each slide from syllable to syllable that this simple message was written by my future self. I have no idea how to respond.
Time passes; I sit still as the machine. This desk of mine is on the rooftop, in the center of a glass room, and the plants of the greenhouse are my silent audience. Gray sleeps in her cage, just below my hovering fingers. Once I have a message to send, a response to the one-line letter I’ve received, she will happily fly five decades away. But staring at the blank white of the page doesn’t help me to fill any of it with words; rather, the longer I sit here, the blanker the page becomes.
After closing my eyes for what seemed like no longer than the time it takes to breathe a breath or two, my head rises from the wooden surface of the desk. I must have slept through the whole day. My eyes open to find the colors of twilight darkening beyond the greenhouse glass. Gray stands still, perched atop the carriage of the typewriter. Like a sleepwalker, I must have typed my response to the message from my future self while asleep, because Gray already has the little scroll tied to her leg.
Through the spaces between the leaves of my plants, I see the sun sinking below the rooftop. Without blinking, without cooing, Gray communicates with me now without even moving. She wants me to read the message I’ve typed to the old-man-me. The greenhouse door swings open; the light in there has fallen so dim now it’s difficult to see.
I untie the scroll and read the line: “What do you want from me?”
I reattach the note to her leg, and as soon as she feels it secured there, Gray leaps from the ledge. She takes off with a spastic flapping of feathers, but then quickly finds a current of wind that allows her to ease back her wings and transform from a bird to a bullet again. In an instant, the horizon tears open—a spot the same size and shape as her body, swallowing and then closing behind her. The secret entryway to my life. I wonder what I will see when I look into the mirror as an old man.
The setting sun splashes orange shimmering mud over the greenhouse glass, where I stand facing it. My reflection stares back at me. I am younger than I’ve seen myself in many years.
I scan this world. The buildings loom patiently in panoramic silence, quiet as mountains but not quite as powerful. The ticking continues. I’m sitting out in the open air, my feet dangle and swing in a scissor pattern. The heels of my boots sleepily kick a rhythm against the face of the gargoyle crouched within the concrete just below this ledge. We are six stories high. My time hinges on the wings of Gray. She’s already carried the first message from me, the “me” that still lives as some old man in the distance. Now I need to read the next note to myself. I need to know what I would change if I could turn the clock hands back—all the way from then to now.
In the time it takes to squint, the speck at the horizon line explodes, sprouts wings, and quickly grows to the ripe size of the bird I love. Gray doesn’t hesitate. She doesn’t flaunt her talent in a spiraled landing. My hand, already in the glove, extends as if I’m signaling for a left turn from a bicycle, as Gray angles her body for the descent. At this speed, the tips of her claws have to spike into the rawhide of my glove the way a snake’s fangs might, otherwise her landing would end in a crash. Her eyes are wide, feathers jittering, and there is the expected note tied where I’d tied the last.
Just as the sun had reflected back from the greenhouse glass, her eyes shimmer, first as fire-filled mirrors, then, as I continue staring, I’m pulled down twin hallways trailing far beyond the depth of her skull. Her sight surpasses mine. She knows what the note says before I have the chance to absorb it, because she knows me now, in this time I consider as the present, as well as who I am in the future. She knows why that old-man-me sent this note in the first place. With Gray on my shoulder, I read his message out loud:
I love her.
Yes, that’s right; I’m in love with the bird that sleeps in a cage that is shaped like a heart, buried behind the keys of my typewriter.
This morning begins like thousands of others have before. I stand with Gray perched on my shoulder, on the rooftop of my apartment building, with the darkness of last night receding. Together we look out over the city. With my latest words already tied to her foot, she senses a shift in the wind and releases her grip from my shoulder. Then she flaps her wings until she catches a current of air, which flows above and beyond the building ledge. Gray glides away from me, attached to the wind, soaring out over the landscape of Brooklyn. She is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking in the distance. I watch until she has flown far enough away that she resembles a grain of sand or the head of a pin, until even that minuscule hint of her image finally fades.
Somehow she knows there is a rooftop out there where another bird-lover awaits her arrival with an outstretched glove. Gray knows more than I do. She knows where my words need to go, and for that I am eternally grateful. I’ve written for what feels like centuries already; and still I have no idea who has been reading these daily typed pages. This unnamed reader may be compiling them into a scrapbook, for all I know, or burning them in a fireplace. Where my words end up depends on the flight of this bird, and each morning when she carries them from me, all I am sure of is that someone unties the scroll from her leg before she returns.
I kneel, with my elbows resting on the ledge, waiting for her. Many hours have passed since she leaped from my shoulder.
The night finally shows signs of surrender, black receding into folds of blue, and the sun takes its chef’s knife and fillets the city rooftops with a severe yellow blade. I strain my eyes, squinting, until I find a tiny speck within the sunlight, a slow-moving bullet flying from the horizon, and the bullet has wings. She shoots past my head, sharply circles me, and then lands gracefully on my hand. Her wings pull toward her body and counter-flap, twitching slightly as she settles down on my rawhide glove. I notice something out of the ordinary, as compared to all those thousands of mornings she has returned to me.
This morning, Gray has carried my words away from me, and already some other bird messenger has sent a reply. Someone has tied his or her own message, for me to read, just above Gray’s claw.
“I am you, fifty years from now,” the note says.
I read it over again. “I am you, fifty years from now.” I can practically hear the old man’s voice, my voice, speaking the words. My voice… fifty years from now… My skin tingles as though I’ve suddenly been covered by hundreds of quick-slithering lizards. I read the note again and again, believing more and more with each slide from syllable to syllable that this simple message was written by my future self. I have no idea how to respond.
Time passes; I sit still as the machine. This desk of mine is on the rooftop, in the center of a glass room, and the plants of the greenhouse are my silent audience. Gray sleeps in her cage, just below my hovering fingers. Once I have a message to send, a response to the one-line letter I’ve received, she will happily fly five decades away. But staring at the blank white of the page doesn’t help me to fill any of it with words; rather, the longer I sit here, the blanker the page becomes.
After closing my eyes for what seemed like no longer than the time it takes to breathe a breath or two, my head rises from the wooden surface of the desk. I must have slept through the whole day. My eyes open to find the colors of twilight darkening beyond the greenhouse glass. Gray stands still, perched atop the carriage of the typewriter. Like a sleepwalker, I must have typed my response to the message from my future self while asleep, because Gray already has the little scroll tied to her leg.
Through the spaces between the leaves of my plants, I see the sun sinking below the rooftop. Without blinking, without cooing, Gray communicates with me now without even moving. She wants me to read the message I’ve typed to the old-man-me. The greenhouse door swings open; the light in there has fallen so dim now it’s difficult to see.
I untie the scroll and read the line: “What do you want from me?”
I reattach the note to her leg, and as soon as she feels it secured there, Gray leaps from the ledge. She takes off with a spastic flapping of feathers, but then quickly finds a current of wind that allows her to ease back her wings and transform from a bird to a bullet again. In an instant, the horizon tears open—a spot the same size and shape as her body, swallowing and then closing behind her. The secret entryway to my life. I wonder what I will see when I look into the mirror as an old man.
The setting sun splashes orange shimmering mud over the greenhouse glass, where I stand facing it. My reflection stares back at me. I am younger than I’ve seen myself in many years.
I scan this world. The buildings loom patiently in panoramic silence, quiet as mountains but not quite as powerful. The ticking continues. I’m sitting out in the open air, my feet dangle and swing in a scissor pattern. The heels of my boots sleepily kick a rhythm against the face of the gargoyle crouched within the concrete just below this ledge. We are six stories high. My time hinges on the wings of Gray. She’s already carried the first message from me, the “me” that still lives as some old man in the distance. Now I need to read the next note to myself. I need to know what I would change if I could turn the clock hands back—all the way from then to now.
In the time it takes to squint, the speck at the horizon line explodes, sprouts wings, and quickly grows to the ripe size of the bird I love. Gray doesn’t hesitate. She doesn’t flaunt her talent in a spiraled landing. My hand, already in the glove, extends as if I’m signaling for a left turn from a bicycle, as Gray angles her body for the descent. At this speed, the tips of her claws have to spike into the rawhide of my glove the way a snake’s fangs might, otherwise her landing would end in a crash. Her eyes are wide, feathers jittering, and there is the expected note tied where I’d tied the last.
Just as the sun had reflected back from the greenhouse glass, her eyes shimmer, first as fire-filled mirrors, then, as I continue staring, I’m pulled down twin hallways trailing far beyond the depth of her skull. Her sight surpasses mine. She knows what the note says before I have the chance to absorb it, because she knows me now, in this time I consider as the present, as well as who I am in the future. She knows why that old-man-me sent this note in the first place. With Gray on my shoulder, I read his message out loud:
The bird is not a bird. She is a woman you are meant to find and love.
The typewriter is not a typewriter. It is a riddle.
You already possess the keys. Don’t waste any more time.
The typewriter is not a typewriter. It is a riddle.
You already possess the keys. Don’t waste any more time.
A thin ripple of fire runs along the divide between sky and city, between day and night. This is the dying of normal life, when the plants of my glass-encased jungle react to signals for sleep, when the other birds flock to their elevated beds. And the people, far more human than I will ever be, reminisce about their day over a balanced dinner, before their bedtimes, alarm clocks, and plans for tomorrow.
I can feel the darkness as a blanket across these rooftops, but it’s nothing to fear. The darkness brings quiet. Right now, it’s quiet enough to hear the bird on my arm breathe.
Time to bring her inside.
After walking down seven flights of stairs, with Gray clinging by her claw tips to my shoulder, I strain under the weight of the cast iron typewriter in my arms. My apartment number is 1B, the only apartment in the basement. I’m not a tenant. I’m the building superintendent, so I’m always on call, but one of the perks of the job is that I stay in my basement apartment for free.
I set down the typewriter as soon as we’re inside and then look across the room, realizing that the sound puncturing my thoughts is the steady drip of the kitchen faucet. I have the tools to fix it, but in my experience as a repairman I’ve found that the simplest solution to any problem is often the right one; so I turn the hot and cold water handles as tightly as they will go. Still the water drips. Just when I’m leaning down to search my toolbox for a crescent wrench, I hear the creak of the chair. I look up.
A silhouette sits across the tiny kitchen table from me, the hazy image of a woman. Her eyes seem at first like mirrors. But when I look closer, they aren’t mirrors at all. They’re wells. Her eyes hold all of my memory, all of my experiences in life worthy of nostalgia. My sight can’t handle their depth or the temperature of the light within. I have to turn my head away.
“Look down at the keys of your typewriter,” she says, her voice as cool as moonlight. “They have been used by someone that you need to meet. This person was the first to unlock its power, the first to use it to unite past, present, and future. If you find out all that there is to know about this machine, its creator, its history, then you will be able to meet yourself at any other time of your life that you wish…” Her voice trails off, much softer now as she says, “And after you piece together your memories, and remember who you are… that’s when you will find me.”
As I raise my eyes from the typewriter keys, my mind is full of questions. There is no bird, no woman, no set of eyes or musical message, only my hands resting on the keys and the memory of what she just said. My kitchen faucet drips drops of water against the metal basin of the sink. Plink. Plink. Plink.
Suddenly, an incredible hollowness expands within me. I have no recollection of any of the days I’ve lived before today. I know I’ve known Gray since long before she awoke within my typewriter, long before she came to inhabit the body of a bird. But now I am staring into the empty space between the water drops.
I don’t remember the woman she is, or was, not yet. For now she is feathers and the soaring feeling when we fall in love. We might not have met in this life yet.
And yet, as I resume typing, I know that I will meet her, as if for the first time ever in my current amnesiac’s memory, but she will have remembered all the time we’d spent over the vast stretch of photo-worthy moments scrolling in the rearview mirror.
And she will be here with me again, as the old man who sends me notes by the legs of carrier birds will as well. And we, Gray and I, will start our time together all over again, and soon. With each word I type, the less my eyes gaze at my fingers.
Seeing beyond them, beyond the keys, zooming in closer and closer to the heart of the machine—the further I lean into the world of make-believe, the closer the soaring bird on the horizon, always, appears.
I can feel the darkness as a blanket across these rooftops, but it’s nothing to fear. The darkness brings quiet. Right now, it’s quiet enough to hear the bird on my arm breathe.
Time to bring her inside.
After walking down seven flights of stairs, with Gray clinging by her claw tips to my shoulder, I strain under the weight of the cast iron typewriter in my arms. My apartment number is 1B, the only apartment in the basement. I’m not a tenant. I’m the building superintendent, so I’m always on call, but one of the perks of the job is that I stay in my basement apartment for free.
I set down the typewriter as soon as we’re inside and then look across the room, realizing that the sound puncturing my thoughts is the steady drip of the kitchen faucet. I have the tools to fix it, but in my experience as a repairman I’ve found that the simplest solution to any problem is often the right one; so I turn the hot and cold water handles as tightly as they will go. Still the water drips. Just when I’m leaning down to search my toolbox for a crescent wrench, I hear the creak of the chair. I look up.
A silhouette sits across the tiny kitchen table from me, the hazy image of a woman. Her eyes seem at first like mirrors. But when I look closer, they aren’t mirrors at all. They’re wells. Her eyes hold all of my memory, all of my experiences in life worthy of nostalgia. My sight can’t handle their depth or the temperature of the light within. I have to turn my head away.
“Look down at the keys of your typewriter,” she says, her voice as cool as moonlight. “They have been used by someone that you need to meet. This person was the first to unlock its power, the first to use it to unite past, present, and future. If you find out all that there is to know about this machine, its creator, its history, then you will be able to meet yourself at any other time of your life that you wish…” Her voice trails off, much softer now as she says, “And after you piece together your memories, and remember who you are… that’s when you will find me.”
As I raise my eyes from the typewriter keys, my mind is full of questions. There is no bird, no woman, no set of eyes or musical message, only my hands resting on the keys and the memory of what she just said. My kitchen faucet drips drops of water against the metal basin of the sink. Plink. Plink. Plink.
Suddenly, an incredible hollowness expands within me. I have no recollection of any of the days I’ve lived before today. I know I’ve known Gray since long before she awoke within my typewriter, long before she came to inhabit the body of a bird. But now I am staring into the empty space between the water drops.
I don’t remember the woman she is, or was, not yet. For now she is feathers and the soaring feeling when we fall in love. We might not have met in this life yet.
And yet, as I resume typing, I know that I will meet her, as if for the first time ever in my current amnesiac’s memory, but she will have remembered all the time we’d spent over the vast stretch of photo-worthy moments scrolling in the rearview mirror.
And she will be here with me again, as the old man who sends me notes by the legs of carrier birds will as well. And we, Gray and I, will start our time together all over again, and soon. With each word I type, the less my eyes gaze at my fingers.
Seeing beyond them, beyond the keys, zooming in closer and closer to the heart of the machine—the further I lean into the world of make-believe, the closer the soaring bird on the horizon, always, appears.
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Jason Allen writes fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. For his novel, The East End, National Book Award finalist Bonnie Jo Campbell provided the cover blurb: “Every page is filled with wise insights about social class and the human heart.” Jason has since been nominated for an Edgar Award and the Georgia Author of the Year Award, and his memoir, Boys Without Fathers, will be released in September of 2026. His poetry collection, A Meditation on Fire, is now with Black Lawrence Press, and he has published essays with Potomac Review, Salon, Literary Hub, and The Strand Magazine. Jason teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Wichita State University and lives in Kansas with his sweet rescue dog, Luna.
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