A Caged Dove

I was nothing before I became a caged dove    
I am nothing still as you unleash me into this unknown flock    
   
twenty years of detained innocence    
I face twenty more of liberated guilt    
   
where I once had a roof to keep the weather out    
I now have a barrel of fire under the bridge    
   
every night I laid my head on a bed of concrete    
today I lay on soiled frigid broken cement    
   
thrown out leftovers from a dumpsters mouth    
substitutes the three hot meals I was served in my cell    
   
friends incarcerated were more brother’s than blood    
replaced the family that have now turned their backs on me    
   
years of yearning to be free    
are exchanged by ways I yearn to go back    
 
© Rachel Orrick 2012