.Everyone Loves a Story with a Moral.

I wrote this while sitting on my fire escape in the grand San Francisco tenderloin. I miss it, so here it is.

spending time...
I've been spending a lot of time on a mode of escape with a bird with one leg. I never noticed it only had one leg until one day, with no specific reason. She's always there though, it's always the crippled ones that stick around.
I smoke a cigarette, (something recently picked up again and even more recently ended), and she turns her head in the weirdest ways. Maybe the smell bothers her too.
She had babies, they lived in a planter outside my window. Then some asshole blew them off the side of a building with a power washer, and they died. She seems OK though. But, maybe she should pick up smoking just in case.
Iguess the moral of the bird is this:
someone may take your legs out from under you, something close to you may suddenly be gone and some asshole could make it hard to breathe, but you'll find an escape.


Fast foward to present.....
I no longer have a fire escape, a bird with one leg and inspiration to write from. Life is different now. I made the final great escape and left that city with the genetically crippled bird population; I tipped my hat to my feathered friend's way of life and flew south for the winter. Some might say it was for the better, some might say that foggy city was where I fit in best. I guess birds of a feather don't always flock together. The way I saw it was, my personal Eco system had disintegrated and a new predator that I couldn't shake was always on my tail. It's name was memories, and he followed me every where I went, taking a chunk of my heart out with each restaurant, street corner, and crosswalk he and I had been together. I realized, I wasn't in the best place for myself; I needed more than just surviving the day to day, I needed to evolve.
I stick out in my new habitat, I still wear the camouflage of my previous domain. It draws attention, but memories isn't here, he hasn't caught my tracks and migrated...yet. Like in most nature shows, he will, that's what makes him a predator. But, I've evolved and I think I've got some new tricks up my sleeve.