Rapture

by Shayne Terry <byron212@yahoo.com>

Rated PG-13

Submitted October 2002

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Love isn't like flying, and I should know.

Flying is freedom. The world falls away and all that remains is silence. There is no responsibility, no expectations, no doubts. Gravity has released its hold, leaving only peaceful pleasure.

Love is bondage, expectations, betrayal and fear. People sing about love as though it's this wondrous thing, hearts and flowers and midnight kisses. The reality is something else. It's really more like a flower. It's a beautiful, ephemeral thing, but it fades away at the end of summer, leaving behind only a blackened husk, a reminder of better times and bitter pain.

Yet we are drawn to it, like moths to a flame. We know it will burn, but in the end, the attraction is too strong. We burn with passion, and passion burns us in return.

Flying asks nothing, and it gives everything.

Love takes, and takes and takes until you are an empty shell and all that is left is for the husk to blow away, dust in the wind.

Love is about trust, and I have no more to give. I thought that magic had faded from the world entirely, a desperate, decaying remnant of romances long gone. The world was meant for the practical, for the grounded, for those who kept their heads out of the clouds and their noses to the grindstone.

There was no room for love, or trust or hope. The hopes and dreams of my romantic youth lay shattered at my feet, and if I still secretly held to one or two, even they were bittersweet.

Flying is like Pandora's gift. It is beauty, and wonder, magic and romance all in one. Until tonight I had no idea that such a thing could exist, that such wonder could be.

His arms hold me gently, and I watch him, amazed. Then I turn my head and look ahead and sigh. Here is a being into whom I can pour my dreams, my hopes, my affection without fear of rejection. Even now I can sense that he isn't for me; he belongs to the entire world.

I don't have to be alone anymore.

Flying is rapture.

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