The first word is PIGEON-HOLE, a place for leaving mail. But since letter writing is a lost art, one of us prefers to use that word as a verb, because nowadays it seems that only people are pigeon-holed. The second word could be DUST or it could be DUMP. Our eyes drag us in different directions, and neither of us wants to let go. So, maybe this time we will just write two fairytales.
Once upon a time there was a carrier pigeon that adored its job. It spent its days flying from one place to the next, carrying words from one heart to the next. The carrier pigeon was so busy, that it didn’t have time to miss its home. But one day people stopped writing words. They stopped tying messages around its feet, and the pigeon hasn’t flown again.
Now it is in a dusty pigeon-hole. Dust has replaced the words and the paper that once filled its life. And the pigeon isn’t even sure if that hole is the home, whence it took flight a lifetime ago.
That would be the end. But one of us says that the place where others pigeon-hole you is always a dump. That carrier pigeons don’t choose any of their nests. And that wouldn’t be so depressing, if they at least could fly. But even when they fly they have to follow an established route. So, they are still trapped. Even when they fly, they are still part of that dump.
I used to be a carrier pigeon, but people don’t write letters anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I mourn the loss of that art, but I miss my home even more. And there isn’t a tear that will ever be able to convey my loss. Its depth. The ocean that has evaporated inside me, leaving me bereft. I used to have a purpose. The words weren’t mine. But I was at their service. It gave meaning to my life. It made me feel at home. Secure, because I belonged.
Flying should make me free. I have been told that it should be an expression of my freedom, because I am a bird. But they made me what I am. A carrier pigeon, that is always told where to fly. I can feel the chains on my feet. The sky doesn’t make them disappear. I follow a route, one whose starting point, whose destination I never get to choose. I carry someone else’s words. And neither the clouds nor the wind on my feathers is enough to break those chains and return flying to the dream it should always have been.
I want a home, a true home. Not the walls of this dusty pigeon-hole. I don’t want a purpose, I don’t want a task to fulfill. I need to be someone that cannot be replaced. Society cannot give me that, only you can. I want to live in your words. I want you to write something for me. It doesn’t have to be about me, it just has to be a place where I can live. And feel like I belong. A place where I am not alone, where I don’t feel lonely anymore. A home, one that I don’t have to build for myself.
Yes, I am a bird. No, I don’t like flying, it doesn’t set me free. I tried writing letters, pouring all my feelings into white paper, until those clouds turned the color of imminent rain, but it didn’t work. I could still remember all those words I had tried to shed. Just like every time I fly, I still remember that my landing is imminent. If the ground is still visible under my spread wings, if I cannot forget its existence and my own limitations, there is no way I will ever feel free.
They told me to outgrow my childhood, to leave it behind, every doll and every little house, because they would never be my home. They told me to grow up. That if I wanted a home, I would have to build it for myself, and maybe for someone else. But the future is not where I want to live. I have read handwritten letters, I have read meaningful words, the kind of words that build homes. I have seen typed words, I know the things people write today. And I know, deep in my childish heart, that that is not the place I want to call home.
I don’t care about lost arts. Handwritten letters were a connection, to someone dear to my heart, to my past. They were a chain, one I never asked to be set free from. I fly following a route that only belongs to me, that doesn’t connect me to anyone or anything else. I would have loved to inherit my father’s route, I wouldn’t have minded having the same chains he once wore on my feet. Flying was never about freedom for me. But I don’t matter. Letters are a thing of the past, and it’s better to pretend that I never existed at all.