At Home

The sun streams in from a break in the white fluffy clouds, pouring over in wide golden shafts, illuminating the tall red and white buildings and casting shadows - lovely black pools of coolness on the asphalt ground. All is still, because it is a Sunday morning and no one's awake yet. Two small trees flank a single red building in the center, pale green with their spread of newly sprouted leaves, their roots cast in an island of splotchy cement, bone white where the sun shines and soft grey where the shadow of leaves shield the ground from the morning heat. A cleaner's rickety metal trolley stands under one of the trees, decorated with spots of rust from neglect. Next to it are parked several of motorcycles, quiet now, but ready to roar to life when their masters return.

Then, the stillness is broken, as a pigeon glides in from a break in the buildings, its white wings cutting through the light shafts. It sweeps over the trees gracefully, following the curve of the flats, flaps once, then twice before landing below a windowsill, where a few other pigeons roosted.

P.S. That red building in the center? It's a rubbish dump that acts as a traffic island for the carpark.