Dove Hunting
Hakim Hines
My mind, like my notes app, is a warzone. A bunch of landmines that only I can confidently sashay around and in between. My incoherent mumblings of whatever I can remember, my failed attempts at terrible poems or songs, my painful hunger to be a creator that only ends with a profound belly stuffed full of my own sad reality. Birds, I’ve concluded, are the closest animals synonymous with freedom. My wish is to recreate the feeling of flying like the white doves I see in my mind.
I write to be above it all. I write to find and dig up all the bodies of who I once was but buried. I make sure the bodies stay like that. I write to gain the strength to leave white roses on the graves of who I once was and who I could have been. I write in the hope of ridding myself clean of the umpteenth number of neon green tennis balls that continuously shadowbox in my head. I write to add new voices to the repeating chorus in my mind to find different meanings for the song of my life.
Sometimes, my desire to be like the doves I dream of gives me the initiative to go searching for them. While others hunt ducks, I hunt the illustrious white china dishware with equally shiny wings. I read the pamphlets and follow their directions every time, but nothing seems to work. I aim my rifle, shoot at the sky, and watch them fall. I continue to disappoint Master Pangalos, but the realism that oozes from seeing my peace fall is too good to ignore.
I write to avoid everyone’s mirrorball eyes as I cannot bear to see what they show me. I write to wage and win the wars in me since I am unable to do the same for the wars around me. I write to assemble all the parts that I wish were mine to make my perfect body. I write to free my voice from being suspended in quicksand. I write to learn the difference between flying with my own wings versus flying with my own wind. I write so I can finally do both and be victorious because I did so.
Even when it has not worked out once, I still have to keep firing at my dreams! I can see the stars as clear as day. They’re just all out of my reach, my aim, my heart. I just can’t waste energy trying to do more than I can anymore. Too many times I have watched the sun and moon trade shifts while I have been used as a jump box for everyone’s antique vehicles that are past their prime. With everyone else out there duck hunting, I’m here, content, settling for these doves.
I write so I can finally kick all of my father’s things out of my grave. I write to finally know which stop on this drowsy one-way express is mine to take. I write to finally know which puzzle pieces of myself go together by correctly identifying what’s for me and not by what’s not for me. I write so these stories of mine can be the first ones to touch me in the righteous. I write so I can finally join my former middle school classmates under the sunlight.
My fallen angels, whose lights shine even in death, are incapable of having a bad side. They learned this inverse pirouette from me. Waning plane lights twinkle off and on before they become unseeable upon landing. Even though my doves have hit the ground, it is still far from over. Their feathers are always more reluctant to fall. As long as there are more doves out there and there has not been a shortage of ammunition or artillery, I still have a chance. I can only hope that this chance of mine will define my conclusion as a happy ending and not a tragedy.
I write in the hope that Lady Luck will find me desirable enough to bless me with her gift. I write to finally have good stories to tell if I ever get invited to a bonfire. I write to have the perfect reason to go to my high school reunion and finally be worthy enough for the spotlight. I write to finally go from chasing doves to having my own and keeping them alive.
Hakim Hines is a Political Science major and Creative Writing minor in the Class of 2025. He has lived in New Jersey for all of his formative years, but was born in Brooklyn, New York, in a hospital that no longer exists. He enjoys reading as often as he can for the overall fun of it and to achieve his reading goal via an app.
Hakim wrote this piece in course taught by Alison Powell, who selected this piece for inclusion in WHR.