The View is Great (A Terrible Thing)

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There’s too many of us and none of us can help each other. We float through life, hoping for a stick to land on, hoping it won’t fly away on a simple wind and storm. There is nothing simple about a storm, a normal person would think. We don’t. We live and watch storms everyday. Every stick will fall off eventually and we won’t stay long enough to nestle on a actual tree. We just hope for a simple place to contain us until we fly off. And we watch our peers from up, some hoping they were strong enough to fly with us, not knowing what it takes to fly from one storm to another. You stay where you are, we warn them. We are only flying so you don’t have to. You can read about our journey if we make it through, or watch us simply, raising your head for once, careful not to get any cramps. Yes, we say, the view is great, a terrible thing we are too used to it by now. We fly and we fly with nowhere to go and only somewhere to run from.

For a long time I believed I was alone and the ones who understood my journey were long gone. The ones who landed on one stick to another, living through life with a prayer to end this flame that burns away their soul. I have to write, some said, whatever I do, wherever I go, there has to be a record, or else my life is wasted. I have to see, others believed, I have to live my life to the fullest, live as many of them as I can, meet as many people as I can, so I can make sense of it all. Some had to run, had to leave their home, and never found it again. Going back felt harder than it was, but staying was unbearable, so they flew and they flew, no tree good enough to land on.

I believed I was alone because there was no one in the sky, and flying alone felt like falling with no one to tell you which way is up or down. Then I realized people like me don’t guard the others anyway. They don’t even speak to them. They fly — we fly, and we don’t look back. We don’t even look around. The flame burns too much to actually see.

Writer’s Note: For everyone flying through a storm the rest of the world only watches from a distance. I hope you find an actual tree to land on.