Why I so often refer to the metaphorical heart as a baby bird.

I don't remember how my hands found the baby bird. Only that I followed its plaintive cries to the nest beneath the deck, and that such a desperate need could come out of such a new fragile being drove my 7-year old heart mad with mis-guided motherhood. The delicate pink of its terrified frame, the blind and bruised blue-berry eyes..made my child hands into two fat monstrosities destined for murder despite the sincere good intentions to turn against their own nature. I could not help but entertain the belief that I could be what it was crying out for, that I alone had heard and answered. A foolishness..born of awe, of a love and a madness too large and instant for my as-yet-developed common sense to quiet. I think that even then..somewhere I knew better.
Then the Adults stormed in.
What have you done?
This tiny life, this love..is not for you. You have stolen what you cannot possibly keep and now the Mother will not return.
Because of you.
I put it back into the nest with prayers..tears and promises to this Mother who could never understand me.
Wept all night..furled tight about my first dip into the fatality of selfish love.
At seven my destiny was determined:
Executioner.