Up Wandering the Upper West Side

A short story about pitying birds

I was walking with a girl at night in the wind in the winter. We were friends, but far from more, and though we’d had our fun doing some sterilized and since-forgotten social thing in Midtown, it was over, and I think we were both just waiting for the moment we could be alone in bed again.

“It was nice of you to take me home,” she said, a little ahead and far on the other side of the sidewalk. It was late, and hardly anyone else was out. It must’ve been the coldest night of the year, too; we…