A year on I bought shoes shaped like pigeons. Imagined they’d distract. From tedious admin, condescensions, words used as thinly veiled threats – standards, expectations, professionalism. My shoe-bird’s eyes shone mischief. Insisted, in a whisper – dance us through Trafalgar Square, over flagstones and fag ends, past half-lived lives. Scatter other birds, send them upwards like silt-dark spores, like momentary black spots in others’ vision. Then strut.
Toddling children applauded my performance, tugged their parents to me for a closer look, offered their snacks up to felted beaks, asked ‘what’s their names?’ They’re called OK Mum and Fine Dad I said.
My boss saw well enough – this fancy of yours, this dancing during lunch breaks, poses a risk; to reputation, to your place here. Those shoes have overstepped, must be removed, replaced. But I’d felt an avian heart beat against the soles of my feet, an enlivening urgency, a rhythm more vital than the tapping of computer keys. Pigeon-like I’d tuned into the earth’s magnetic field, felt the irresistible pull of my true course. Seen, like those flighty birds, more colours than my parents ever had; shimmering pinks dancing on slate grey pavements, turquoise singing in the branches of plane trees. My walk became a nodding chassé, aiding balance, sharpening vision. I quit that job in the city in pursuit of kaleidoscopic choreography.
Anika Carpenter lives and works in Brighton, UK. Her stories have been published by Ellipsis Zine, Fictive Dream, Gone Lawn, Janus Literary and others, and have been shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Prize and the Bridport Prize. You can find her via her website www.anikacarpenter.com
