The Dove

Sinewy.
Venturing forward into what they know is wrong.  Waffling to me, advancing.  Advancing toward the epitome of my vulnerability, opening my very core and pouring hydrochloric acid in it.
It hurts.
It stings like a wasp bigger than a basketball, a burn from a hot coal, the chill of antarctic ice.
     Limpid intentions and an intuitive mind rarely make for easy affairs.  But my mind is dormant.  It has hibernated.  Not wanting to cause a fracas, I back away.  
     They are tigers.  No, they are game hunters and I am a dove.  A prize.  A delicious prize.  The epithet of their kind is to eat, yes, but why must they eat the dove?  If not to eat, then to pluck the feathers from, taking its one beauty.  It has done nothing.  They will not eat another food, they will not settle for chicken feathers.
The dove is what they want.
     The morality of the game hunters confuses me.  Their greed appalls me and their desire frightens me.  Their accurate shot guarantees certain death for the dove; nonetheless, the dove flies--but the dove's wing is broken.  The dove cannot fly, teh dove cannot escape.  The mind, as the body, has shut down.  It has crashed; all data is erased.  
     The data will be hidden forever.  The chips which hold the information have been used and abused over and over and over again.
     The dove has fallen.  The dove is dying.  It is crippled.  The dove hopes the taunting game-hunters will shoot it and prevent weeks, months, years, eternities of pain and psychosis, ruining the dove's purity, the dove's beauty.  
     The dove becomes crippled and disturbed.  It does not want to associate with anything.  The dove is social-phobid and agforaphobic.  The dove is afraid, terrified.  The dove is afraid of the creatures that even slightly resemble the hunters.  The dove is afraid of the night; the hunters will come into the nest with their tormenting machines.  The dove wishes for tranquility; but, as calmess does not come, the dove wishes the hunters had killed.  The dove wishes to be no longer.
     The dove yearns for love, for another to be able to commiserate.  Nonetheless, the dove tells nothing of the hunters, for it will be accused of dramatizing, or, worse, lying.
     So the dove prattles to its acquaintances.  The dove has acquaintances but no friends.  The dove is very amicable, howevber, and wonders: why do I have no friends?
                    The pride of the purity has faded.
     The dove works up courage and ventures out.  The bird then realizes it has made a mistake, for it is stepped upon with boots.  The dove's wings are crippled once more.  The bird's plumage grows, but gray, not white.
                    The dove hibernates once more.
                    The dove hibernates forever.

Author's Note

It's a metaphor.

Reviews

[catherine]

this is amazing. bravo.

[ann marie]

This almost made me cry. WHY HAS NOBODY READ THIS???? I can definitely see the metaphor... just great job, you're simply a genius.