I am nothing more than the birth of ruin.

I am a bird.

I was meant to fly, stitched from the sky itself,
my wings dipped in morning light, warming with the hush of dawn,
tracing wind like calligraphy above the earth’s scars.

I was meant to write poetry with the air, untethered in the breeze,
To call out only in song, no lies between my syllables, no masks beneath my beak.
Just the shimmer of dew on my back,
as the sun rose over valleys I didn’t need to name.

I have nestled in the arms of trees, rocked gently by breathless winds,
made nests from memories of fearless flight and hope,
known only by the wind and not by name.
I am but one among billions,
unburdened by the borders of time.

I was meant to be a bird.

You built plastic skies, turned the blue into poison.
You wrapped fish hooks in sweetness and left them beneath my wings,
forests are razed for paper I’ll never read,
until my nests lay bare in broken branches.
Communication towers like monoliths split my flight path in half,
invisible wires snapping my neck mid-flight.

You poisoned the worms with your pesticides, then blamed me for dying,
for dropping from the sky like leaves in a season that never ends.
You carved the silence with your bullets, you clipped my wings,
called it sport, called it control, called it progress.

No eulogy. No grave. Just a crumpled form at the feet of humanity.
I was nothing but a marker for death.

***

I am a deer.

I was born in the hush of a forest cathedral, where light drips golden through green,
where my hooves kiss the earth and vanish like rain into moss.
I would dance with the mist, and vanish like a god.
Crowned with antlers grown from moonlight and moss,
drinking from rivers clear as childhood, running not from fear but for joy.

I’d flick my ears at thunder,
raise my young in the hush between storms, and morning dew,
I’d rest beneath the stars without fear,
because the wild knows me as its own.
I’d live in silence, and never feel shame for it.

I was meant to be a deer

I would be mowed down in suburban sprawl,
my ribs cracked against cold metal and indifferent speed.
They call it a collision, as if it’s mutual.
They cull my kin in the name of balance,
not seeing that the imbalance was born in concrete and asphalt.

You paint roads over my home,
burn rubber across my sanctuary and call it civilization,
and you call it population management while you erase what’s inconvenient.

I am hunted by those who do not eat what they kill,
who mount my head above their fireplace,
and call it tradition.

The air grows hotter, the seasons turn cruel.
My fawns are born into a world where nothing stays safe,
and I vanish with the morning mist, not from peace, but extinction.
I was made for harmony; you made me a target.

***

I am a serval.

I am birthed from fire-colored earth, moving like dusk itself,
I prowl through tall grass like a ghost in golden skin,
crouching beneath the sun with silence pressed into my shoulders.

The earth pulses beneath my paws like a second heartbeat.
My legs were meant for leaping, bones like springs coiled with purpose,
ears tuned to the slightest shiver of a mouse beneath the dirt.

I do not roar. I do not need to.

I am stealth, stitched in gold and charcoal,
I am elegant in the way only something untouched can be,
a hymn written by evolution in soft fur and sharpened teeth.

I was meant to be a serval.

You have broken the wilderness into squares and sold them,
You turned my freedom into currency,
caged my dull roar for your photos, your ego, your amusement.

You dressed my body in collars, declawed my history,
and when I bit, you called me dangerous.
You bred me like a novelty, made hybrids for profit,
twisting my bloodlines for aesthetics,
took my wild and sold it in glass cages.

You hunted me for my skin and wore me like triumph,
chased me from the land that knew my name,
I am not endangered by nature, but by your appetite.

You have not saved me.
You have subdued me.

***

I am human.

I am a body covered in flesh, a mouth that consumes more than it can name,
a set of bones and veins wrapped in unforgiven sins.
I walk not on the earth, but over it, as if it owes me something.
I take root in cities that bleed the land dry,
plant towers where trees once conversed with stars,
erase ecosystems with the stroke of a pen and call it economy.

I burn what is old and wise to build something hollow and temporary.
I worship control, domination, expansion, excess.
I name every animal a threat or a product.

I sell extinction as a brand.
I am born with the power to protect
and the apathy to watch it all burn.

But here I am, an architect of extinction,
a species of sorrow;
even the air feels thicker with guilt when I breathe it.
I will never belong here, and yet I will rule.

I do not deserve wings.
I do not deserve antlers.
I do not deserve claws.

I do not deserve this earth.
I am but a destroyer of life itself.
I was meant to be anything but this.