Discrimination

The clouds shut her out,

No longer accepting of her

Innocently flawed company.

Bare flapping wings

Dropped too suddenly

High above the ground.

Those whispy voices

Beyond the clouds

Had banished her

Because she was of an impure ilk,

Proven by the sickly sagging

Ugly skin of her wings,

Lacking glowing plumes,

And mind unenlightened.

But she’d dropped her wings

Much too suddenly

With a moan of rejection,

And now she plummeted

Through biting wind

Like layers of ice

And pockets of frost,

That ate holes through the tender membrane

Of those wings that might save her.

But for them she’d been cast out

Of that blessed paradise beyond the clouds.

They were her damnable defect;

How could she bear to rely on them?

So she tucked them close about her

And resigned to the jarring impact

Of the Earth

That wouldn’t keep her either.