"Flight"

It was in his sixteenth year that Ezra experienced death for the very first time. The call had come early in the morning. The sound of the phone had brought him out of his deep sleep. He had been dreaming of his friend Pieter. They had been flying hand in hand above the pale blue dot that was the world beneath them. They were laughing, singing, and embracing the heavens with a vision of a better tomorrow. Pieter's words floated on the stratosphere as he sang his song to Ezra. "Flying high above the world, don't shed a single tear. We are together now, my love, with nothing more to fear." He sang it in a whisper close to Ezra's ear. They turned and looked at one another- there was no fear. Freedom had become the only thing that they knew, which in itself said more than any other word ever could. Then came the darkness and the falling. The spherical walls of the dream had shattered like a crystal ball, and it's pieces falling from the heavens like an endless snow landing on the world below. Pieter's hand slipped from Ezra's hold as he was engulfed in the darkness, completely disappearing. Ezra reached out, crying to swim in the obscurity, but he fell only further towards his empty shell. There was the faint sound of a heartbeat that he heard through the murky thickness, and then silence.

It happened around three that morning, and there was nothing that anyone could have done to stop it or nothing anyone would later admit. It was Pieter. He had crawled out of his bed as wide awake as he had been when he crawled in earlier that night, sat at his desk, and wrote his suicide note. The handwriting was barely legible in certain spots where the ink had run from where his tears had dripped onto the paper, forming little black puddles of sadness. He sat there for nearly an hour or more, staring at the paper but not the words. His mind was elsewhere, frozen within his thoughts and convictions.

Then quietly, he stood up and dragged his desk chair into the closet. He tied a rope from his bathrobe with shaky hands into a knot around a reinforced ceiling beam in his closet. The other end had been formed earlier into a sip knot- a trade he had learned in the Boy Scouts. He slipped the rope over his head, and tears poured from his eyes. His lips quivered as he whispered, "Father, forgive me…father, forgive me, father forgive me…" over and over. He clenched his eyes shut, praying hard and hoping his prayers were heard. Sweat dotted his face and around his neck, dampening the rim of his shirt. Then he took a deep breath and relaxed. He opened his eyes and looked through the open closet doorframe into his room. He took a final gaze of remembrance of the pictures facing him on the top of his dresser. He especially looked hard at the picture that sat in front of the rest. He tried to remember every line and curve of the boy's face that adorned the chemically processed paper. He would never forget. He whispered the words "I love you" and kicked the chair out from under him. He had only moments to feel the tightening from around his throat, and just as panic was setting in, a haze of fuzzy dots floated between his eyes. They began to swirl and mist his vision, and he knew nothing from then on.

Ezra sat up on one elbow and looked around his bedroom. Everything was there, and everything was real. The falling had only been a dream, a nightmare. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and the seat that had collected at his brow. His hair matted to his forehead, and his sheets and pillow were soaked. His heart pounded so loud that he could almost hear it in his ears. He lay back against his bed's softness, breathing hard, and pulled his knees up to his chest. He closed his eyes and tried to drift back off to sleep, but the essence of the dream was still haunting his thoughts. He heard a sound, and it was faint and ghostly as it seeped in around his door. "Ezra?" The voice was his mother's. She lightly rapped her fingers on the door and called out his name again. "Ezra?" "Yeah…" Ezra replied, but no answer came back to him, only the sound of tears and footsteps as his mother walked back down the hall.

He looked at the door for a moment and then crawled out from under the covers. The cold air in the room sent frigid chills across his naked body, and goosebumps sprang upon his arm and across his chest. He walked across the room and pulled a pair of old blue jeans off his desk chair's back. He also picked up the crumpled t-shirt from off of the floor. Putting them on, he ventured out into the hall and made his way to the kitchen. As he entered the room, he saw his mother sitting at the table. She had her head turned and did not see her son come in. Sitting the table was a cup of coffee, and another that she had poured absentmindedly.

"Mom, are you ok?" Ezra asked, standing just inside the doorway. She turned and looked at him. He saw that her eyes were red. "Come sit down," she said. He walked around the table and sat facing her from the other side. "Mom, what is it?" He looked down at her hands and saw that they were trembling. She gave him a faint smile and shook her head ever so slowly. She was about to speak when even more tears filled her eyes. Ezra reached out and put his hand on hers, mostly to calm them, but also because he couldn't stand to see them shake. She looked up at him again, never making any attempts to smile.

"I knew…I never wanted to believe it, but I knew, I knew." She looked away. She could not help it. His mind became a jagged accumulation, like rocks upon the ocean shore, and each wave that crashed was a thought that was torn by the rocks. Ezra looked at his mom. He had a pretty good idea what she was going to say, but he wanted to know was how. Ezra had been nothing but secretive all along. He had left behind no empty holes in which something might emerge. "What. What do you know?"

Patty Taylor stood up and walked to the kitchen sin. She poured her coffee down the drain and rinsed her cup out. Out of the window, his mother saw that it was about to rain. She thought how fitting it was for the moment at hand. How would she do this, she wondered. How would she open this giant door that was bulging with so many secrets and so much pain? "I know about you and Pieter." She said, her back still turned to him. Ezra said nothing for a moment, just swallowed hard.

He sat there, looking at his mother, knowing that this was it. The time of truth was there, and there would be no more hiding. "How did you find out?" he asked quietly, the sick feeling of panic was running through his veins. Patty turned and saw her son sitting there looking at her. She knew her son was the same kid he was the day before, and the day before that, though, he looked different in some way to her now. She could see the panic in his eyes and could hear it in his voice. He was afraid. He was scared of her, afraid of what she might do, what she might say, and where the day would end. She didn't want to do this. How could she? How could she say the words that would crush her son? Different as he may have seemed to her at the moment, she loved him and did not want to see him suffer, but he had to know. She was his mother- she could protect him, or so Patti thought; she walked over to her son and squatted down before him. She took his hand in hers and held it tight, and tried to push some strength into his soul from her own but doubted its ability to ease the pain that he would feel. Looking hard into his eyes, his mother saw just a little boy who was coming into a cruel world, and her grief for him was monumental.

Taking a few breaths, she prepared to tell her son the news. "Ezra," she said softly. "Pieter's parents just called. Pieter; killed himself last night." He looked into her eyes. He looked into his mother's eyes and thought that Ezra could see that she was telling the truth, but he did not want to believe her words, but he had to believe them. Pain in her eyes and motions that sever could not be lies. Tears filled his own eyes as reality sank in. His face crumpled into a torn mask as he lowered his head and cried. He cried until he felt dehydrated inside; his soul felt like a summer heatwave had passed over, drying him out-, cracking his very being. He just stared into the darkness of his closed eyes, and for once in his life, he felt like he was nothing at all.

Patty reached up and grabbed her son and held him tight, and he broke down even more. His body trembled beneath her. He tried to speak, but the words were lost. Just the whimpers of a young boy escaped him. Patty only held on, and the harder she held him, the more she realized that her son, who she did love very much, could have been dead right now. It may have been her, who had stumbled into her son's room and found him dangling limply in the closet, but it had not been, and she vowed silently to herself, as she kneeled and held her son in her arms, and vowed that it never would be. The two of them remained there, holding one another through most of the morning, crying at the loss of love, the first love. Never again would Ezra hold Pieter in his arms secretively in his room and his bed, nor would he hear his laugh or fall hopelessly in love repeatedly with his smile.

Only in memory would Pieter survive, but even then, he would eventually begin to fade. Patty cried at the loss that could have been. Never in her life did she want Ezra to feel that he could not come to her. She also thought about what Pieter must have felt and believed in making him that his parents would not understand. What must it have felt like to feel so much confusion and turmoil? What did it feel like to give it all away? "I love you, Ezra," she said, "I am sorry about your friend." They continued to hold one another, mother and son, from that point on, locked together in friendship, understanding, and love.

Ezra was not in attendance at the funeral. Pieter's parents would not allow it. They blamed Ezra for all that had transpired, telling others that he had enticed their son into the "evil" acts that had become his demise, and this set off a series of emotions inside of Ezra, and for a while, he began to feel that he had played a role in Pieter's death. Perhaps he did not love him enough or shelter him enough from the storm. Maybe Pieter did not see in him the strength he needed to know that they would be ok and make it somehow in the world.

He had always seen Pieter as vital and dared to do just about anything, for it had been Pieter who had made the first move. He had kissed Ezra one evening after a school football game. They had retreated to the back of the band building to steal a few drags off a cigarette Pieter had stolen from his mother's purse, but Pieter had taken more than that. With one kiss, he had stolen Ezra's heart. Pieter had opened so many doors and brought to the surface many emotions within Ezra, so many feelings discovered one night on a camping trip in Old Man Jenkins backfield, miles away from the outside world, naked under the night sky. The smell of honeysuckle sweetened the air as they held each other close and gazed upon the stars.

"Just close your eyes and imagine the world falling below you." Ezra had said that night. "Why?" Pieter asked. "Do it… there is something that I want to show you." Pieter closed his eyes and followed Ezra's words, their softness relaxing him, making him feel light. He saw the tunnel Ezra described, and in an instant, he was floating high above his body, amongst the stars and swimming in the light of the moon's ivory glow. Ezra was there as well, smiling and laughing. It felt so natural, and for once, he felt completely free.

Three days after the funeral, Ezra got into his car and drove to Jenkin's field. Since his mother had told him about Pieter, he had not left the house, but he felt that he had to say good-bye to him, though not in the cemetery. Only Pieter's body was at rest there, not the essence that Ezra wanted to remember. He turned off the highway and drove a few miles down the dirt road that led to Jenkins Dairy. With the sun in his face, Ezra pulled the visor down to block the glare. When he pulled it down, a folded up piece of paper fell into his lap. Ezra picked it up and turned it over. On the other side, he saw his name written in Pieter's handwriting, his heart raced at its sight, and he nearly drove off the road.

Ezra thought for a moment about stopping the car but continued. When he reached the field, he parked his car and got out. The sun was warm, and a cool breeze whipped at his hair while walking around the area. He had the letter tight in his hand, wanting to read it, and in the same respect not wanting to read it.

He knew that inside were probably all the answers he needed, everything that would tell him why. He sat on the ground and crossed his legs, tears prevailing his eyes as he twirled the paper around in his fingers. He wiped the tears away with the back of his hand and slowly unfolded the letter. It read:

My Dear Ezra,

I have rehearsed this letter many times, and now as I sit here, I am at a loss for words. What can I say to you to let you know how exactly I feel? I know that you will probably never forgive me for what I am about to do, and that pains me beyond anything you can imagine. I am afraid, Ezra, I am scared of my thoughts and actions. Me- the one who always held it together, I was the one who tried to be the strong one. But I am scared- like a child. I am not afraid to admit that to you. The world and its pressure, my parents, and I can't take it anymore. I cannot go on pretending to be something that I am not. It is funny. I am seventeen- seventeen-,, and I feel like the world has beaten me. Every morning is a struggle- a struggle to go to school and wonder which fool is going to call me a faggot, an effort to pretend that their words do not affect me, an attempt not to break down and cry in front of them. Sometimes it is a struggle to love you because you are the person that I want to be.

You are so strong, Ezra. You will go far in this world and make something of yourself. You have the strength to go on, whereas I do not. I cannot bear hiding this secret. I want to run down the streets and confess my love for you to the world without being condemned, but unfortunately, I cannot do that. I know that my parents would disapprove, and though it should not matter what they think- it does. They are my parents, and I love them. I cannot have them hate me. I cannot be the child that they see as the wrong child. I don't want them to look at me and ask themselves where did they go wrong. I have to be free from this. It hurts me so much.

I am sorry for doing this, and I am sorry for hurting you. I hope that you will not hate me. PLEASE DO NOT HATE ME. Remember me in your heart. Let me please- let me fly.

I will always love you.

Pieter

Ezra tried to smile as the tears poured from his eyes. He rocked back and forth, bawling with much pain. Looking up to the sun-filled skies, he remembered the stars, and then with a voice that cracked the silence, he muttered the words, "Fly my love, fly so high." They tore at his throat as he choked to say them, and he lay back against the grass, clutching the letter to his chest. He closed his eyes and found the memory of them floating high above the world, and he began to drift up to the sky, to the place that was theirs, where no one could touch them.

He floated there, in the haze where he saw the light coming towards him. It was brighter than any other he had ever seen before, and from out of it came Pieter. He embraced Ezra, making him part of the heavenly glow that encircled his body- it felt like home. Ezra looked into his face and did not say a word. Everything that he could say was expressed through his eyes. They kissed for one last time, and Pieter wiped Ezra's tears away, though Pieter saved one that had frozen from his touch. It sparkled like a diamond immortalized in his hand, and he kissed it gently.

The light was pulling them apart. Ezra could hear the faint sound of Pieter's voice as he sang to Ezra, "Flying high above the world, don't shed a single tear, we are together now, my love, with nothing more to fear." Through the light, the stillness parted above, and everything was beautiful. Ezra witnessed a tiny Piece of heaven as Pieter vanished within a flutter of angels' wings and a delicate white mist.