Monologue by Jovan Lewis

            It wasn’t always like this. I used to live in a nice house with nice people. They fed me and played with me. I had my own little bed and everything I could have ever wanted. Then one day the people were packing boxes I wondered what was going on. I climbed into a box and saw some of my toys.  I stared playing with them in the box. The little boy watched and giggled at the sight of me playing in the box. Then the woman picked me up out of the box and placed me in a cage. I wondered what was going on. Two men were gathering the boxes and putting them out into the truck. He seemed to fit a lot of those boxes in that little thing I thought to myself. It had words on it and a picture with words I didn’t know. I try to figure it out. Sa-n-ta Ana. I was confused. Oh well I’ll get it eventually. Suddenly the cage lifted up. I saw the boy’s fingers and I playfully tapped them. I was put into the family car in the back. It was like a mix of a pick-up and a SUV. I was put in the trunk.

 After what felt like 5 minutes we started moving. The purr of the engine lulled me to sleep. In the middle of the night I woke up. I had a feeling we were almost there for a majority of the trip I didn’t feel a lot movement of the truck stopping. And there was a lot of stopping now. Suddenly, there were bumps, big ones. My cage bounced around from them. Then one big bump rolled under the truck and sent me flying. The impact opened the cage and I broke out at full speed to catch the truck. It was too fast I couldn’t catch up. I stopped and looked around. Nothing was familiar, or at least not enough. I started walking down the road to a park. I saw all these strange yet vaguely familiar things. Signs that shined in the night and flashed like the orange lights on the front of cars. I got to the park and climbed a tree to the lowest and safest branch, and rested.

Daybreak came and I climbed down the tree. There were people here. I wondered if they knew the people I came with. I wanted to focus on that but I was so hungry. I walked up to a lady feeding birds. She took one look at me and shooed me away. I walked away. I saw a man with an apron that looked like the one the man that I knew wore when he cooked, surely he would have some food. I walked up and saw a little bird and it looked sad. It saw me and watched. I walked up to the man with the apron. He saw me and how hungry I was. He wasn’t like that lady I saw before. Instead of shooing me off, he gave me some food. I don’t know what it was but it tasted really good. He pulled it out of his sandwich. It was brown and thin. I ate but I was still hungry, but the man refused to give me more food. I ran out of the place and crawled under a tree and slept for the rest of the day.

It’s night when I wake up. I walk past the place with the man and the bird but I only saw the man no bird. I looked around for the bird, no luck. I wondered where it went. I wandered the streets until I came to some tracks. I started to cross when I heard something coming towards me with a rumble that shook the track. I looked and saw three lights heading toward me. I knew I had to move. I couldn’t I was frozen in fear by the sight of this monstrous metal thing barreling toward me. Suddenly the little bird from the place chirped loudly and snapped me out of it and I escaped the tracks just in time. I thanked the bird and we walked on together. We got to a place called a motel after what felt like forever, and we rested. I started to get hungry again. I looked around for something to eat, nothing, I then saw the bird. My mouth started to water. I shook my head to get the thought out. I slept under a car in the parking lot. The next day my friend and I walked into a nice neighborhood and lucky for the both of us the first house we went to ended the journey. My family was here and the little bird was given a new home with me. It’s good to be home.