Snapshot #1
Close to where the elevated sidewalk meets a paved road, the body of a pigeon - or is it a different bird?- lies. / The photo is taken from a bit too far away since the painful glimpse I took towards the corpse was concise. I cannot conclude: It could be a pigeon, or it could be any other bird. /// In any case, it was a bird. /// The feathers are sticky and streaked with dark, coagulated blood. / One wing closed next to the chest like a fish fin. / The other wing remote from the bird's body, odd and unnatural - probably due to a broken shoulder bone - although strangely could be gesturing a slightly open motion of a quiver, shaking drops of water caused by a street pipe, let's say, or a sudden rain. /// The legs are shrunk close to the belly, particularly angular like the metal skeleton of a closed umbrella, alluding to the last shred of emotion passing through—livelihoods embodied in the fear of death, gripping this body's final moments. /// Amid the mash of blood-stained feathers, a beak seems to peek out. Is this indeed a beak? It is impossible to know with its current state and my rapid glimpse. I can only guess the location by noticing an area where the blood is significantly condensed and the distance of this area from the talons and the tip of the wings. /// Where is the tail? /// I can't see any triangular feathers at the edge of the body, and the tail is gone. /// A tiny twig now rests in its place. Adjacent to it is a flat cigarette butt. Thereafter, a grey, square stone is placed in a row and then scattered gravel. Then, to the left of all these, a trench filled with cement springs a spontaneous street weed.








Snapshot #2
The fresh corpse of a pigeon that seems to have died not long ago lies on the windowsill. /// A tranquil death: / All exterior organs seem in place. / Her wings' feathers are silky, and her belly looks fur-like, soft and round. Not flattened nor mutilated, maintaining the graceful round volumed pump of a living thing. / It might even have felt warm if I had touched it, but I couldn't; I could barely look at it once I realised it was dead. /// Death indication? / She's lying on her side with her legs loose under her - And live pigeons do not lie on their sides! I don't think they lie down at all. /// Who knows how this pigeon died? - / Most likely, she didn't die there, on the windowsill — but maybe she did? / It doesn't look like she got run over by a car or a tram, either. /// Beside her lie two thin twigs. /Maybe the bird was on her way to build a nest, or is it a coincidence that they are over there? /// Was she sick and died? Could be… /// Maybe she was run over after all? - Perhaps she was run over, and her body survived unharmed. Only her soul flew away. Something in her internal organs may have stopped working, Perhaps? Maybe the shock of a surprising vehicle caused a deadly heart attack, and then someone placed the body on the windowsill. / ...Who was the man who put her there? / Was it a woman, instead? / Or was it a child? A boy? A girl? / A group of boys? A group of girls? / A group of children containing boys and girls? / A group of coed adults? /// The passing shadow, / momentarily resting on the window ledge, / glazes blue on the cold stone, the pigeon's black wings, and the wooden window frame. Then, contrary sun's rays reflections glisten along the sides of the window's planks and on the claws of the dead bird / And also on the soft belly fur.






Snapshot #3
On a neat sidewalk paved with bricks made of tiny pebbles, the concrete demarcation between the tiles is perfectly straight, and a diagonal shadow falls on the pavement; something small disrupts the order of the straight lines. / It’s a sort of a stain. However, it is difficult to discern the nature of this stain. /// Slowly, the vision becomes more explicit in my mind, and when the thing I am looking at crystallises into an identity in front of my eyes, I am shaken. /// This is not a flower flattened between the leaves of a book. / It is not a leaf and a stem whose colours have faded. / This stem is a tail, and the leaf is the corpse of a trampled mouse. / The pink spots around it are blood stains faded from the sun on the gravel. / The tail is clearly visible, and so are the delicate feet on the side of the pelvis. / But the head has wholly lost shape. Now, it is a grey crescent with shards of pinkish inner pulpy mash underneath - A mixture of muscles, blood and bones of brain, teeth and palms - smeared on the neat gravel stones.










Snapshot #4
A gruesome death on the edge of a long, straight electric railway. / It's the remains of a pigeon smashed into pieces, scattered on the ground like diffused clouds. /// The evidence indicates less about her life and more about the moment of death: / A tram travelled from right to left while this pigeon stood on the edge of the metal track; she did not manage to escape for unknown reasons and was crushed to death under the tram. /// Now, her body is spread with one impasto stroke from right to left: /// Spots dot the asphalt next to the track, gradually coalescing into one central black stain. The stain becomes red again, thicker and more voluminous - into minced meat with noticeable remnants of straight white lines. These were the feathers. /// At the centre of this event is a raging sea, conflicting waves of entrails' red and white-greyish once soft feathers, going here and there, a battlefield. /// At the right edge of the remains, the body is signed with the bird's right wing spreading out, maintained in its entirety. /// No evidence of a head. /// An orange fall leaf lay flattened close to the pigeon like an extra organ, probably brushed over with the same stroke of a tram. /// Several other tangled feathers are stuck to the road a few centimetres away from the body, most likely linked to this once-living entity.







Snapshot #5
Ugh! / A dead rat! / An ugly creature when alive, but even more repulsive when dead. /// This fur's softness is not attractive to touch - how can one explain the reluctance? / These tiny limbs are impossible to adore - how can you explain the reluctance? /// But here unveils a battle scene: The rat has lost. /// The body - covered in matted fur, still fleshy and muscular in its demise, curved back like a slingshot ready to attack. / The limbs seem to want to hit the air. / The thick tail continues the curve of the body, threatening to sting at any moment. /// A black hole at the centre of the chest as if the heart was dislodged, or perhaps as if hit by an enemy's deliberate dagger. /// The crashed head is now in an undefinable black-grey-pink mash. / If this mash had been unlinked from the body, one could not have guessed what it was when it was; it could have been a gnawed chewing gum, a worn piece of a shoe sole, or a persimmon's top leaf.








Snapshot #6
A dove of peace on the side of the road. /// ...To tell the truth, it's not really a dove of peace but a white pigeon with a brownish chest lying dead on her back next to a crushed cigarette butt. / She doesn't hold an olive branch at the edge of her beak; instead, her head rests on a damp fall leaf. /// Despite this brutal truth, / her closed eye - a pink slit extending the line of the sealed beak, / and her pink claws calmly crossed under her / - broadcasted stoicism. /The left wing spreads generously while the right is slightly more closed / - forming a gesture of elegancy. /// Raindrops on her round grey belly curve into small water balls, refusing to seep into the insides of this cohesive being, as if rejecting the recognition that this being has just begun a process of decomposing into nothingness.