i never asked to be peace. i never asked to be your white flag in feather form, your postcard, your tattoo on the ankle of a girl who still writes love letters to the boy who left.

i am not peace. i am hunger. i am small bones rattling under sky. i am wings beating like broken clocks. i am the sound that happens when the world is too loud and i cut through it anyway.

but you—humans—caged me inside a metaphor. made me holy. you needed something soft to blame hope on, so you picked me, a bird too stupid to know i was being drafted into your wars. now whenever i fly, people look up and say look, peace. no one says look, a creature that still shivers in the rain, a body that doesn’t know where the next crumb will fall.

and i hate it. because it feels like being forced to wear a crown of flowers at a funeral. like being asked to smile while holding the corpse. you put olive branches in my beak and called me salvation. meanwhile, i choke on twigs.

sometimes i want to molt it all off—the myth, the whiteness, the trembling softness you pinned to me. sometimes i want to scream like a crow, black and sharp, just to remind you: i am not what you prayed for.

but then—sometimes—i see a child point at me through the window of a war-torn house, whispering, look, a dove, and i shut my mouth. because maybe even a lie can be a kind of medicine. even if i am nothing more than feathers pretending to be peace.