Rooftop Dreams
Hunter Choate

She kept dreams in a rooftop pigeon coop. She was a beautiful girl, and I didn't mind her strange hobby. I even saw them up there a few times. She said the fact that I could see them made me special, that others either could not or would not acknowledge them. They were winged things, flittering little balls of light inside their chicken wire cages. The last time she took me to see them she wore a floral summer dress and carried a shotgun slung across her right shoulder. It was just after a sun shower and heat charmed snaking plumes of steam up from the roof. She asked me to open the coop and set them free. I told her I didn't like the gun. She said all sacrifice is a lesson in love. So I released them one-by-one to take flight, while she filled the sky with gunshots and laughter.