The Best I’ve Ever Had

by Jackie Miller

The Best I’ve Ever Had
In the dump outside
I found charred feathers
like needy fingers pilfering
tainted candy

Slotted between the
desperate and the beggared
my poor dove

Jaunting taunts from
pickled pleasing parrots
their bitter envy
Their over eccentric owners
trading canaries for eagles,
fates sealed in unborn gems

Don’t tread on my scarlet robin
Those blessed with elegant feathers
and plagued with entitlement
think me pathetic
tenderly guiding my veins
under that sweet edge

indifferent irises paint adjacent walls
with cardinal scoffs and glares

Remnants forging this lark
of potential happiness but
not quite there

When did we give up the fight?
My silly little pigeon and I
It was in the dump outside my
psychiatric cell, breaching
the confines of my brain.

Beating heart beats out of

its chiseled ribcage,
its russet rhythmic race
recognition of existence.
This songbird is alive
Whispering its pleas
to save.

It isn’t much, this pitiful thing
Pretentious parakeets don’t
understand the broken glass
we have to sleep on
shards safely sealing that
sharpened sword of which
used to mark my
tongue and throat.

They are ignorant, for this
bird is much more than
what I had before
And as they scowl and screech
at my stork unaware

of the power and anger
festering in its skin
those broken screams of war
My healing mockingbird
wasn’t built for love
or this endless brutish stroll.

It wasn’t made for killing
but that brittle wind
grazes sunken carcases, and
Making due with what it had
there is no stopping its
fight for life because
when this wren is starved
it becomes a
Vulture.

Jackie Miller is an artist who indulges in many types of artforms from traditional drawing to crocheting. For them, writing is a new form of expression. They are a pansexual genderfluid Asian-American who had many struggles in their adolescence, especially with family and societal relationships. They’d like to portray their pain in order to help those who are still struggling. Their ultimate goal in life is to help those who suffered the same way they did and give them a safe place to be themselves.