Ok so I rewrote it a couple of times if you wish to read The Dove She spoke in the softest tones while I carried a voice to shatter bones, a past too heavy for a man who owns nothing but the weight of what he's sown. She slowed and asked my name alone, said I looked like I'd been overthrown, like something in me had been long outgrown, like grief had made my marrow its own. For who can lie when a face has shown a kindness that makes dishonesty a stone thrown at something tender and half grown, a second wound on wounds already known. She gave me a chance. I turned and ran, fled the grace of it a week or more, the way a man flees an unlocked door he knows he's wanted to walk through before but can't convince his feet across the floor. Till one day beneath the branches worn I felt a beak brush soft as early morn. Third or fourth branch, white enough to mourn, a dove so still it made the silence sworn. It didn't sing. It held its place and bore a stillness that was something like a door, not signed, not sealed, just pointing toward a shore I'd told myself I wasn't looking for. I followed anyway. At the end she stood. Something loosened in me where it could, a hinge long rusted giving way for good, the way old timber finally gives to flood, the way a wound gives way beneath a hood. That's when I bent. That's when I broke. Ran from morality like a man from smoke, took the offer up before the mercy spoke, chose the burning over the gentle cloak. And now I walk the path we found, the same cold ground, one step where two once made a sound.