Some people don't fly. Some of us don't want to fly. Some of us just want to disappear.

<img alt="" src="/media/inline_insight_image/1000106775.jpg"/> There were two of us I sat in the light.He sat in the shadows just beyond it. We never spoke.Not once.But the space between us told a story no one else noticed—because no one else was looking. I sat near the windows, always chasing sunlight with my eyes. I had a soft voice and a softer heart. People liked me. Teachers said I was kind. I carried a notebook full of half-finished poems and whispered promises: "One day you will fly too." I said it like a prayer, to classmates who cried in bathrooms, to the mirror when my own hands trembled.I believed people were meant for more. Even the broken ones. Especially the broken ones. He sat in the back, stitched into the silence like part of the wall.No one remembered when he transferred in.No one noticed when he stopped raising his hand. He wrote, too. But not poems. Not hope. Just a quiet unraveling. "One day.I am gonna grow wings.A chemical reaction.Hysterical and useless." He etched it into his desk with a bent paperclip.Small, jagged letters.Not meant to be read.Just meant to exist somewhere outside of him, where the ache might be quieter. While I dreamed of lifting off the ground,He dreamed of vanishing.Of becoming something the world couldn’t touch. I talked about the sky like it was waiting for everyone.He stared at it like it was mocking him. I said:"You'll get there. One day. We all will." He thought:I don’t want to get there. I just want to stop being here. Then, one Tuesday. It rained like grief.And he didn’t show up. The teachers murmured.The students shrugged.Only I noticed the absence like a hole punched through the day. They found his body three days later.Alone.Cold.Clutching a notebook warped with water damage and blood at the edges. Most of the pages were blank.Except the last: "One day.I am gonna grow wings.A chemical reaction.Hysterical and useless.But at least it will be quiet." They held a memorial.Flowers. Speeches.A moment of silence that stretched like a noose. I sat in the front row, fingers clenched around the only copy of his words.I didn’t cry.I didn’t speak. I just stared at the sky,and for the first time,it didn’t look open. It looked cruel.Empty.Indifferent. After that, I stopped saying it."One day you will fly too." Because some people don’t.Some people fall.And some wings never grow.

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