Two pigeons claim my AC unit as their own. I name them Christopher and Columbus. They laugh at me, seasoning my windowsill with shit. My neighbor tells me to be sure they don’t get inside the unit; that’s when I need to start worrying about the air quality. When I was twenty one, my mother coughed up blood for the first time. She took a picture of the tissue. Her doctors say she caught a rare infection, likely from avian feces. We used to garden together in our front yard. Dad bought her a birdwatching book for her fiftieth birthday. Mom is in the hospital again. Bilateral pneumonia and she’s struggling to breathe. I had never heard of Sepsis before. The train takes me home and I fall asleep to a dove’s lullaby.