The Forgotten Companion

Gray-winged wanderer of stone streets,

you are no ornament,

no rare beauty.

And yet,

you endure where others vanish.

Once, you were our messenger.

You carried secrets stitched to your legs,

love letters across borders,

hope across battlefields.

You were trusted with what we could not entrust

to any other hands.

Now you roost in cities,

foraging in the cracks of our neglect,

finding scraps enough to live,

making a home in every corner

we thought too broken for life.

You are a lesson in persistence,

in the quiet covenant between human and creature,

a partnership mostly forgotten,

but still written in your wings.

Pigeon, companion,

you remind us that resilience is not always grand,

but hauntingly intimate —

a heartbeat in the dust,

a wingbeat over ruins,

still circling close to us,

whether we acknowledge or not.