The Boy With Wings

I carefully adjust my soft, pink floral dress. I have to look my best. Joy and excitement, hope, overwhelm my small and timid heart. Tightly clutching a paper lunch bag, I shuffle shyly into the crowded room.

The overwhelming senses, alive with bright colors and new sounds, blanketed with the exciting sensation of standing on the edge of a great cliff. I was about to tumble forward. Barely six years old, my mind is wide open the world’s knowledge and immune to impossibilities. I want to learn. I want to see.

It was a beautiful day that I remember clearly. But that day in early September was not memorable because of a new journey. That was the day I changed the path of my life. That was the day I met the boy with wings.

I saw him immediately, through blinding fluorescent lights. I saw him, because I could see his wings.

His wings weren’t visible to anyone else. In fact, no one even acknowledged his presence. But I could see. He had wings that were a breath-taking shade of white, pure plumage that was nothing but enthralling to a six year old mind. He had bright, gray colored eyes, flashing with light and imagination. But the most astonishing thing of all, to me, was a soft glow that enveloped him.

He seemed ready to take off flying.

Even before I could read, I had surrounded myself in books. In these books, I had seen pictures of angels. I was sure, this little boy was one.

Right then, I was overtaken with an undeniable faith in angels.

Building up my courage, telling myself that I needed a friend, I tottered over and sat down in an empty chair next to him. In clumsy English, I asked if he wanted to color with me. And so we did, scribbling with any color we could reach, all the way outside the lines.

That was the day I met the boy with wings. A beautiful day I remember clearly.

My teacher seemed concerned, my mother did too. They watched as we did everything together, me and my new best friend. They whispered, shook their heads, and had many long and complex phone conversations. All of this flew right over my imaginative mind. The boy with wings heard nothing, and saw nothing, it would seem, except for me.

I wanted wings too. Who wouldn’t? My dreams and fantasies were filled with thoughts of flight. The places I could go! The things I could see! I could soar above the pressures of life, float away on the clouds, and join with the angels in heaven. They would welcome me through their glorious, gilded gates. They would welcome me home.

I drew angels everywhere I could, painting them along the walls, sketching on any paper in reach.  The boy with wings and I painted them together. Needless to say, the walls got repainted and I was denied paper of any sort. They tried to contain my outlets, but they could not contain my imagination.

I spent every waking moment with my friend, the boy with wings. When I cried, he wrapped me in white feathers and cried with me. When I laughed, his gray eyes lit up with laughter of his own. When I get lost in painting his wings, he watches over my shoulder with a knowing smile.

Clocks ticked with the passing of minutes, calendars moved with the passing of months, people changed with the passing of years.

I changed too, however much I hate to admit it, and so did the boy with wings.

As I passed through grades and classes, opening my mind to a world of knowledge, his bright light began to dim. His wings began to droop, and take on a sickly gray color.

One day, at the teetering age of fifteen, I noticed that his eyes had become dark and stormy. The light had died.

Stepping in to the real world, he was barely visible at all. When his smoky, dark figure could be seen, he was secluded in the back of my mind, or lingering in a corner.

I no longer had time to draw angels. The growth of knowledge in my mind had choked the imagination.

I closed myself off to the world in a desperate desire to reconnect with the boy with wings. I searched for him, always looking. I still wanted wings. Without him there, I could never have them.

I had no friends. I needed the boy with wings.

My mind began unraveling at loose seams, overtaken by dark shadows and small glimpses of white feathers. I sat in countless chairs, being told how my mind should be working. I lay on a number of tables, examined and prescribed. Nothing could awaken the boy with wings.

I turned away from the inner turmoil and the dark pit that I had dug myself in to. In my desperate attempt to escape, I ran into a monster.

It’s there. Watching me.

With those bottomless brown eyes

That seem to have no light.

The monster.

I stare at the monster.

The monster stares back.

Hate burns a hole in my soul

Curling and contracting

Like a venomous snake.

I scream at the monster.

The monster screams back.

I tell it to go far away

Where no one can find it

Or change

Into something that can be loved.

I cry about the monster.

The monster cries too.

It plagues my soul

Spilling bitter tears from my eyes

Slicing rivers of despair

That turn to ashes.

I reach out to touch the monster.

The monster reaches too.

But it is untouchable

Separated from me

By an unbreakable wall

Of misery.

I hate this monster.

With my soul.

My mortal enemy that haunts me

Wherever I try to escape

It is always there.

I stab the monster.

The mirror shatters.

My entire world becomes a glimmering kaleidoscope of shattered glass and blood where it slices my skin. I crumple to the ground like a sad, broken doll, shaking with painful sobs, entirely alone with a cracked and scattered image of myself.

Reaching blindly for a shard of glass, I grip it like I once held crayons and paper. Never letting go, a grip that is strong with faith and an undeniable belief in angels. Warm blood trickles down my arm as my faith cuts deep in to my palm. Perhaps I can carve an angel. Paint along the walls with blood.

I’m sinking in to a dark abyss, floating away, below the world and all of its torments. Black blankets surround me, staunching blood and emotions. I drift into the darkness, and it feels beautiful.

My eyes begin to close. I wish with what is left of my heart for the boy with wings, that he can wrap his pale plumage around my cuts and bruises, healing my scars and drying my tears. He would open my imagination to other worlds, and help me escape from monsters and darkness.

But he is not here. He left a long time ago.

My eyes have closed. From the back of my mind, I can almost see the boy with wings. He is lying next to me in the darkness, barely tangible, just a shadow in the fog. His color is gray, his eyes are stormy, he is surrounded by an ever fading light. There is not a single speck of light. No white feathers.

He wraps me in his dark wings, and holds me close while I slowly lose faith in angels.