To Brave Him when He Takes Thee Hence

I have always yearned for the sky, and the freedom it has brought. It’s not an original dream, I know. The sparkling blue and green wings with which I fly are evidence of that, the collected work of hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions before me desperately reaching for the sun before the arms of their children grew them closer to that grand finishing line. No, I am not the only pigeon to have dreamt of the wonders past the stratosphere. But still my whole life, I have chased it as if the first to become mad with curiosity and wonder, desperately flapping my wings till my lungs bled, and I was forced to glide upon the wind down toward the earth again.

But despite my Icarian dream, and my fantasy of the last frontier beyond, I shall have no mythic fall. Instead, I feel the hollow bones within me grow brittle, the tattered feathers upon my body grow dirty and fall away, and the zealous vigor with which I once furiously used to pursue my dream has grown cold. My fall will not be mythic. It will not be quick and explosive, as a bird shot for sport careens from the sky. It shall be from the candle burning within me burning to the wick. 

Is this all a bird has to look forward to in this life? To live dreaming of such a simple fantasy, only to grow so old and slow that you must choose between your life being cut short by the talons of a hawk or the mouth of a dog, or the decision to abandon it all and realize your life of mediocrity in death below ground? And that's if you're one of the lucky ones! Most live in cages, locked with thousands of others unable to ever spread their wings, never even knowing the sweet allure of a sunlit sky. Sometimes I envy them. Though living with no drive, and no sight of beauty, they still live. Despite living in shadow, they can find contentedness in the darkness, in an obscured world that they will never truly see. They still fear death, despite living a life far worse than it!

It seems far less work than my life. Despite searching for light, despite pumping my wings and screaming towards the heavens to allow me in, despite searching for beauty, I have found the same thing those birds in the damp and crowded cages have found. No light. No beauty. No heaven willing to take me in. Only darkness. So I have decided to stop searching for those things. I have decided to embrace them. That's why I fly to this train station.

People bustle around me. No doubt energized, no doubt searching for something. They all have their skies. Their heavens which they reach for. None of them will get it. Even as they grasp the very thing they long for, they will soon find it hasn't satisfied them, and they will fail to get the next thing they search for. But still, before I descend towards my destiny below, I watch them with a sweet sort of pity. I can feel the rumble of the trains below my tired, aching feet as people speed off to their new golden horizons. I miss the years when I had such vigor. When I would soar above the metropolitans dotted with cars, noises, scents, and all the wonders of the world slowly crumbling in abandoned parking lots; or fields of golden wheat, hills of green grass, forests deeper than any ocean, while I dreamed of a powerful air vent that may have blown me past the moon.

I dream no longer. And in a quiet lull amongst the traffic and the bellowing trains along the track, I find a way for myself down below the platform. Before me, I see atrocities I never thought I would need to. My fellow kind’s bodies littered the space ahead of me, their eyes bulging from their rotted and grotesque skulls, their legs bent and contorted and their feathers plucked and dispersed amongst the weeds and spider webs. I push myself into it. I’m not walking along the carcasses of the dead. No, I'm walking upon the dead dreams of many just like me. It's a reminder that the illusion of individuality is just that, an illusion. Every single one of them had a dream just as strong as mine. But as my foot squishes into ones decayed body, and my wing brushes on a broken beak, I'm reminded that they all gave up just like me. I was never special. I never will be. I am just as resigned to this fate as any of them were. I have given up.

Yet still, I plunge deeper into them. Something still drives me. Some twisted and gnarled hope that I may find something to save me. To rejuvenate my old wings, and bring back breath to my lungs. I still search for some way to that endless expanse above through the depths of this deepest hell.

I can see rats and bugs around me, eating at the corpses of those once beautiful dreams. They eye me, but know me to not be true prey yet.

I delve deeper still. The bodies are far older here, and much more deteriorated. Eyes have long since been taken from their sockets, and flesh hangs loosely off their gaunt faces. There's a muck here, partially mud, and partially their dead remains, leaking into the ground and making it hard to walk. The rats must know this, for I can hear them following me now. But I still try to move, despite what I tell myself, that it's better to just lie down, to let the rats take me. To die a death without a struggle.

I trip and fall, and my wing bends in a way it was never supposed to. A fire ignites all along my right side as the shock wears off, and I’m left with only the pain and the sickening sight of my broken limb to help me. The rats see this as their time to attack, and so soon one comes for my leg. I attempt to fly off, to kick him off and scurry away. Instead, he latches on with his brittle, flat teeth, and I hear a stomach churning crack.This time, my sight goes white as my broken leg registers within my mind. I should have given up by now, should have just settled down and embraced a sweet and calm death before it led to this.

Instead, I flap and kick anything that will still move. I claw at the rats faces, sending one reeling in a pain I imagined to be something like what he dealt to me. Even as one bites into my back, I squirm until I can peck at him, sending him off my back just long enough for me to get away from him. Still, they keep coming, chasing after their goal. See, that’s the difference between me and them, I don’t know why I fight. I don’t know why I aim to stay alive, in fact, I came here to die. But they have a goal, they have something to reach for, they fight for a good meal, they fight to sustain themselves, they fight to kill me. I fight aimlessly, and don’t even view them as a true enemy, I am destined to lose. But even as the freak energy the fight gave me drains, and the injuries I’ve sustained hurt more than ever, I keep fighting.

I prepare myself as the rats regroup, but just as they all pounce at me, my eye catches on something. Just ahead of me, there's a light. As the rats' attacks grow fiercer and fiercer, and as I slowly flail less and less, the brighter and brighter it gets. It does not shimmer, as a used wrapper or a ring does, but rather it’s warm and expansive, yellow and powerful. It’s such a familiar sight, something that seems so much like home. I must get closer.

I throw off one of the rats from me, and roll away from the other as I limp towards it. It seems to not have a source, to continue past the horizon. The rats are on me again, but I still hobble towards it, slowly being more and more illuminated by it. Then finally, I truly understand it. My Icarian dream, my goal, my fantasy, my entire life is before me. As the rat pounces onto my back, pinning my good leg and wing, and firmly planting me in the ground, I reach with every fiber of my old and aching being toward that beautiful light, and it burns so intensely as I get closer. Even as the rat bites into my neck, seconds from twisting the final blow to end my miserable existence, I am captivated only by the burning on my wing, now finally submerged in this great light, burning from its immense heat, sending me into a euphoric state. Because finally, after all these years of reaching, after so long pumping my wings in exhaustion until my lungs couldn’t take it any more, my wing finally did it.

My wing burnt with the heat of the sun.