One of these days I'm just going to take a giant leap off a cliff and trust myself to the wind... I really am. At least, I think I am. I have these wings...I don't know what to do with them. But I think they'll hold me, or at least let the wind hold me the way I've been longing for ever since before I can remember. It's this need, deep inside of me, that screams out for me to jump to what should be my death. It whispers to me, tells me that I'll be fine, because the wind loves me. The wind won't let me fall, not like Father did.
Every time this comes to mind, I can feel the wings on my back, twitching, eager to feel the wind ruffling through the feathers that I shouldn't have. They aren't really there, not in a way that anyone but me would accept as reality, but I can still feel them there. I can't see them, can't touch them, can't even hear the sound of the slight breeze that shifts each and every feather around ever so slightly and should cause the ruffling sound that has always calmed me. But they're not really there, except that I can feel them tugging at muscles that I didn't even know I had.
I've seen countless doctors about them. Back specialists, normal general doctors, even a couple of shrinks, since I thought after a while that I was going crazy, feeling wings that I shouldn't have. Each and every one of them told me the same thing. "You don't have wings." "You can't fly." "You must be suicidal." The one I hated the most was, "You need help." As if I didn't know that! I wouldn't be there if I didn't need help. I wouldn't be asking to try and figure out what was going on if I didn't want to get to the bottom of these wings that suddenly appeared on my back one day and just won't go away, despite the fact that all of my senses, except for touch along the entirety of my back, tell me that they aren't really there.
And I continue to want to jump and test them out. Maybe I am going crazy. Maybe I do want to die. Or maybe I just want to feel the wind's embrace, in a way that most people never feel it. I try to ignore the feeling, try to go about my life as if I didn't have this pair of non-existent wings on my back that are urging me to fly like a bird even though I know I can't. But I can't ignore them. I can't ignore the feelings, no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I focus on the tedium of day to day life that should quash all sorts of creativity, including my peculiar delusion.
I can't forget the wings, or the wind. And I know that someday the feeling will overtake me and I'll take the plunge. Maybe as I'm falling down, feeling the wind on my face, in my hair, and running across each and every feather that I don't really have, my wings will become reality. Or maybe I'll fall to the ground, and not have to feel them anymore.