Pigeon English Read Online Free

Poppy Morgan how to play the bass drum I smelled her hair by mistake. I got too close and then I just smelled it. It was honey flavour. Poppy Morgan's hair is yellow like the sun. When she smiles to me it makes my belly turn over, I don't even know why.

    You can only see the car park and the bins from my balcony. You can't see the river because the trees are in the way. You can see more and more houses. Lines and lines of them all everywhere like a hell of snakes and smaller flats where the old people and never-normals live (never-normals is what Jordan's mamma calls the people who are not right in the head. Some of them were born like that and some of them went like it from drinking too much beer. Some of them look just like real people only they can't do sums or talk properly).
    Mamma and Lydia were both snoring like crazy pigs. I put my coat on and got some flour. It was very late. The helicopters were out looking for robbers again, I could hear them far away. The cold wind bit into my bones like a crazy dog. The trees behind the towers were blowing but the river was asleep. Papa and Agnes and Grandma Ama were all dreaming me, they were watching like I was on TV. The pigeon could feel me waiting for him, he was going to come back tonight, I just knew it.
    I waited for the wind to move, then I put a nice big pile of flour on the handrail. I spread it out proper long so the pigeon could see it from miles away. Adjei, the wind came back quick quick and blew it off! I just had to hope he'd smell my plan and come back. I like their orange feet and the way their heads move when they're walking like they're listening to invisible music.
    I love living on floor 9, you can look down and as long as you don't stick out too far nobody on the ground even knows you're there. I was going to do a spit but then I saw somebody by the bins so I swallowed it back up again. He was kneeling on the floor by the bottle bank. He was poking his hand under like he dropped something there. I couldn't see his face because his hood was up.
    Me: 'Maybe it's the robber! Quick, helicopter, here's your man! Shine your torchlight down there!' (I only said it inside my head.)
    He pulled something from under the bin. It was all wrapped up. He looked all around and then he unwrapped the wrapping and I saw something shiny underneath. I only saw it for one second but it had to be a knife. It's the only thing I can think of that's shiny and pointy like that. He wrapped it up again and put it down his pant, then he ran away sharp-sharp towards the river. It was some funny thing. The helicopters didn't even see him. They didn't follow him or anything, they were too high up. He runs proper funny like a girl with his elbows all sticking out. I bet I'm faster than him.
    I wanted to keep watching for if something else happened but I had to greet the chief too bad. I waited as long as I could. I don't know why the pigeon never came. He thinks we're going to kill him but we're not. I just want something that's alive that I can feed and teach tricks to.

I watched the sun come up and saw the boy off to school, I start every day with the taste of his dreams in my mouth. The taste of all your dreams. You look so blameless from up here, so busy. The way you flock around an object of curiosity, or take flight from an intrusion, we're more alike than you give us credit for. But not too alike.
    This is me nine storeys up, perched on a windowsill quietly straining the remnants of my last millet meal. This is me pitying you, that your lives are so short and nothing's ever fair. I didn't know the boy who died, he wasn't mine. But I do know the shape of a mother's grief, I know how it clings like those resilient blackberries that prosper by the side of a motorway. Sorry, and everything. Now watch your heads, I need to. There she blows. Don't shoot the messenger.

    Every time somebody shuts their door too hard my flat shakes. You can even feel it. When one person shuts a door