What Are These Feathers on Me?

Published in the Summer 2000 issue of the Laurel Review.

 

“Hey,” my neighbor says to me. I’m vacuuming bits of Christmas tree outside my door. “Did you see this?”

I look down the hallway. We have never passed a civil word before this. Only reluctant eye contact.

“I wasn’t here,” she says, as I come over. “But if it leaked, how come my hallway’s dry?”

She’s like a detective investigating her own crime. She eyes the wet patch outside her door suspiciously, as if there is a distinct possibility that the water came from someplace other than from under her own door."

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