This is really good, with the imagery and the metaphors. I might suggest playing around some with line breaks (some just seemed a bit odd to me; if you'd like me to I can point them out) and a couple of the images (like the clipped wings; clipped wings are an image that's already been used, maybe not enough to be cliche, but too much to still be new either; I might try weights for wings or stone wings or something like that), but overall it's great, and I especially like the ending.