She fell from the sky.

I’d never seen a dove swim before today.

I looked down at the carcass,

the blood vandalizing her soft white belly.

She looked too alive to be dead,

too dead to be asleep.

I stuck my thumb inside the bullet hole,

smeared the blood on my knees.

I told her I was sorry and sang her a lullaby to heaven.

That must be the place birds go when they die.

In 4 months from now,

when the year starts over again,

the mom will hold her babies,

they will cry over her crop milk.

The type of paralyzation that never goes away.

And when the squabs grow too big for the nest,

they will not be called birds,

They will be called sport.

Watch their mother die,

stick their beak in the bullet hole,

taste death.

They will want to feel sorry.

They will realize all the stories they were told

about birds and freedom 

were only stories.

And the freedom was only 

open season