23October
The flat was oppressively warm; I shuffled to the sash window, hoping the lingering heat would have given way to a breeze. The air felt thick, as if the room itself were pressing down on me. A tight knot formed in my throat, cutting my breaths short. Ive known this sensation beforea blend of weakness, emptiness, and a flat indifference that no longer startles me. My legs trembled, my mind dimmed, as though someone had flicked a single switch in the dark.
I collapsed onto my single bed and, almost immediately, slipped into sleep.
At first the dream was chaotic: fragmented voices, footsteps echoing up a strangers staircase, the amber glow of a lamp cutting through London fog. Then everything cleared. I became a bird, sprouting enormous white wings, light and sharp as the first breath after a long silence. I rose above a city that glittered below, trembling with countless lights like a scattering of tiny worlds.
The city was unfamiliar, yet felt oddly like home. Towering shadows of buildings stretched upward, as if yearning to touch the stars. Between them lay bridges, canyonlike streets, a sense of freedom that cant be explained, only felt. It was easy there. Suddenly I remembered what I might be without fatigue, without the need for approval, without that internal tightness simply alive. Free.
I spiraled over the city, darting between rooftops, skimming the cool air with my wings, convinced this feeling would last forever. Then an invisible tug pulled me downward, like a forgotten memory.
I need to lie down, my own voice whispered from somewhere far away.
The world shivered. Light fractured.
I began to fallsoft as a featherback into that same stifling flat where it all began. I snapped my eyes open as if someone had called my name. The room greeted me with the same stale air, now colder, as if a part of me had lingered in the luminous city, in the shadows of those wings.
I sat up slowly, the silence hanging thick, like a record stuck on a single note. The surroundings looked familiar yet alien, as if the walls had shifted while I slept. I ran my hand across my chest, over the spot where my dreamwings had beat. My fingers met only the cotton of my tshirt.
Strange I was almost flying, I thought. But the memory of the dream was already melting, like wet snow on my palm. All that remained was a faint stir of air inside mesubtle, almost imperceptible, but real.
Then it clicked: the dream wasnt about flight. It wasnt about a city I couldnt name aloud. It was about being tired of living on earth where every step feels like a debt. It was about needing a different sky. It was about wings being not a fantasy but an ancient, almost forgotten memory.
I held my breath, not to scare the feeling away, and whispered into the darkness:
If I ever decide Ill go back there. Ill truly soar.
In that instant something quiet answered from within:
Youve already begun.
I lingered at the window for what felt like ages, watching the night surrender its hold. Shadows thinned, the sky lightened, and the world seemed to inhale before slipping back into its usual hustle. Yet something inside me had shiftedsoftly, silently, irrevocably.
I stared toward the horizon, where a thin ribbon of light split the world into before and after. In that moment I realized I was no longer afraidof my fragility, my emptiness, the weary apathy that used to wash over me like a tide.
Those wings werent just a dream. They were part of me.
I closed my eyes gently, placed a hand over my heart, feeling a quiet thump confirm the thought. Not loudly, not triumphantlyjust firmly.
Enough living for other peoples expectations. Enough endurance. Enough waiting for permission to be myself, I whispered.
And in that breath something unfurlednot wings, but something deeper. My soul, long crouched in darkness, finally rose to its full height.
I opened my eyes to a pale pink dawn, the first morning light caressing my cheek. I stepped back from the window and felt the floor beneath my feet tremble. Or perhaps the world itself shivered. It mattered not. What mattered was that I was no longer falling.
I drew a deep, truly free breaththe first in monthsand said aloud, clear and steady as a vow:
I will rise. On my own. To the heights that visit me in dreams.
No stifling room will ever again be my cage.
I turned away, my steps light, almost airynot because I was in a hurry, but because a person who has found their wings never returns unchanged.
