by Jacob Shelton
I followed a man home last night. I wasn’t secretive about it or anything. I didn’t crouch around corners, or hide in bushes when he looked over his shoulder. I couldn’t. I was wearing a six-foot tall bootleg Big Bird costume. The sunshine yellow of the feathers had faded, and I now looked like a hazy memory of PBS mornings. I was supposed to be handing out flyers for the pizzeria where I worked. But I couldn’t stop following this man, wondering what he did in his home, if he was happy, or sad, having dinner with his wife, or eating alone. I stood at his window watching him watching me. Before he went to bed he zipped himself into a matching bird costume and I walked the fourty one blocks back to the pizzeria where I shoved the rest of my flyers through the mail slot.