Pete Hyberger is a waste of a film degree who spends their days serving food and drink to elite Manhattanites and scribbling poetry on server notepads. Any days off are spent cuddling their cats and raising a virtual family in The Sims 4.

Southwest of Waverly

By Pete Hyberger

I’m making a potion inside of myself. It's called being sad. I want everyone to know this, so I tweet it, and no one cares. I shout it from the rooftops and no one cares. I write it on a little piece of paper and tie it to the leg of a carrier pigeon and he flies all around the world so people can read it, and even then, they only care about the pigeon and his miraculous world-journey, and not about my potion or my sadness, or my flawless attachment of the message so that it does not fall off of the leg of the pigeon flying around the world.

My grandparents live in a big brick house in the-middle-of-nowhere, Nebraska, surrounded by

fields on three sides, and on the last, two old horses that stand all day in a field of dry grass. I

used to know their names, but they never remember mine, and the second horse has been talking

again about finding a new field where the grass is less dry. He talks like this all the time, but he

always stands in the same spot, and I’m not sure he would know better grass if he ate it. The four

acres that constitute my grandparents’ backyard are wild and overgrown, save for a stretch of

seaweed green grass where their dog pads up and down and rolls all over. On the third acre sits a

pigeon shed, which my great grandfather once used to house his homing pigeons after the second

world war, and it is in this shed that I keep the pigeon who shares my message with the world.

Unfortunately for us all, the pigeon’s newfound fame makes him fickle and demanding. Every

morning his rider has increasingly unattainable asks, such as “a rock from Venus that also has

legal residency in Barcelona," or “a five-leafed clover plucked from the exact center of a desert

by the gentle beak of a tawny fledgling owl.” As the caretaker of the pigeon-shed and the sole

provider for the miraculous pigeon-hero, I do my best to manage, if not meet, his requests, but

every day my inevitable failure becomes clearer. I am spending so much time and so much

energy (and frankly, so much money) trying to appease the pigeon, that I begin to fear for my

potion’s sake. I feel hollow and quiet inside, and I am scared of what will happen if my potion

remains incomplete. If it dwindles to nothing, what will happen to me?

When one of the horses disappears — the first horse, not the second, which is how I know

something is wrong — the pigeon’s coos grow quieter and unenthusiastic. His glossy wings dull

to a lakey, muddled blue, and the next morning he asks only for freshly caught saltwater and a

single strawberry seed. My concern blossoms into suspicion when the next day, he requests

disposal of his copy of The Artist's Way. We are doing our morning pages together, and I warn

him, “Do not break your contract! Do not step too far into fame’s cloying grasp, I cannot save

you!” He swears to me all was well, but today he has no demands, no rider, no list of requests.

He sits on his perch in the shed on the third acre of my grandparents’ yard, and I stand with the

second horse on the desert grass, and no one moves or makes a sound, and now I am sure: that

pigeon drank all of my potion.

Pete Hyberger is a Nebraska native residing in Brooklyn, NY, with their fiancée and two cats.

They have previously been published in Blood Tree Literature, The Spotlong Review, and

Eleven and a Half.

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