The sound of one wing flapping

Awakened this morning by the sound of something banging against my house. This is the third time this week.  At least I wasn't in a deep dream this time.  It's 7:30 in the morning, golden sun creeping over the ridge across the way looks beautiful through a crack in my purple crushed velvet drapes, but it's too early for me to be out of bed.

I wonder if it's the little girls from across the alley playing basketball but it's 7:30 on a Wednesday morning. Why would they be out there? One time in a driving rainstorm the girls were playing in the alley, using wheeled vehicles like trikes or carts with steering wheels. They banged into the garage door over an over again.  I just smiled indulgently. Didn't want to be like the the neighbors who berate them and fight with their parents. Those two are sweet to me and I love them from afar.  Anyway the girls are so much older now. I don't even know which is which and forgot their names long ago.

I decide it was the birds (it wasn't). Tap tap tapping. Not the same as banging. The birds on the skylight, sometimes thwap thwap thwapping. The gulls with their webbed feet. I thought it was a break-in the first time it woke me. Birds on the skylight or wind in the vertical blinds. I grabbed my grandma's scissors and called the neighborhood watch. Police cars jammed the lane and me in my nighty. Just an ankle long t-shirt, so unforgiving. With all the cops there and me clutching the shears, I thought of my fat and the spectacle I was.