dún

Something gray-white and round-seeming thumps against the window from without, and I think a ball has been thrown from the street below, a handball maybe -- something softer than a baseball or a softball. The glass only rang slightly, there are no cracks, but I do not know yet what has happened or if it will happen again, and I am cautious going to peer out and down.

The street is empty. The barest pale flapping is visible for a moment between the leaves of the sycamore.

It was a dove, a dove; the roundness of its breast has left a print on the outer surface of the glass, a colorless image of a hundred tiny feathers. Two bits of down from the gray throat stick where I cannot reach them from inside. They twirl now in the evening wind.