“Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” –Harper Lee

When I was a child, I let my imagination roam free. Free from the unknown weight I have seen my parents and family carry. Little wings of innocence, holding me in flight, looking down upon everything else.
In my flight, I understood not of the problems below me, but I was told to stay high. Fly away from them. I was told that my wings would only work so long, and that I should fly to the highest points of my imagination and beyond. Oh boy, did I fly. I flew to the bat cave, to the moon, to a black hole on the cusp of being sucked in and being gone forever, only to use my wings to fly back home. When I was in flight, it seemed, nothing could touch me. Inaudible bullets came zinging my way each time I took flight, yet I rose above it.
As I grew older, those bullets came closer to my wings and I could only fly so far. The bat cave soon became merely fiction, the product of another mockingbird. The moon now had a science behind it, I could no longer travel there without the proper gear, and that proved too tedious. And the black hole that I was being sucked into, I was unable to fly from. I was sucked in, hopeless and without flight, bullets of life piercing my wings and sending them down to the earth along with me.
Although I didn’t see my wings when I got back to earth, I see others flying high in the sky. I see them going to the bat cave, and hanging out on the moon, and even managing to escape that black hole. And even though through time the little mockingbird within me has perished, I hold unto myself this one truth:

I shall never kill a mockingbird; that is a sin.