30/05/2025
| One day, I am gonna grow wings.
At the edge of an old playground stood a rusted swing set, the metal creaking with every soft push of the wind. A young man in a wrinkled uniform sat on the swing, barely fitting in. His polished shoes caked with dry earth, from walking nonstop on a muddy ground. His books crumpled like a candy wrapper too messy for hope. He watched the clouds shift slowly, like tired thoughts drifting through his head.
“Why do you look so tired?” a voice asked.
He turned. A boy stood a few feet away, he has a polished black shoes, wearing a white shirt, just plain and innocent. He's holding a paper airplane in his hand. His hair was kempt, his eyes bright and familiar.
“I’m just... waiting, I think,” the young man replied.
“For what?”
The young man hesitated. “I don’t know. Something to change. Something to lift me up. I hope I passed all my exams.”
The boy frowned. “You used to believe you’d grow wings.”
A soft laugh escaped the man. “I remember that.”
“You said someday, you'd fly away from here. From all this.” The boy gestured to the buildings beyond the park. “Did you forget?”
“I guess life got heavier. School, deadlines, disappointments. People expecting you to be someone else you're not.”
The boy folded another airplane and threw it; it sailed crookedly before tumbling to the muddy ground.
“You know,” he said, picking it up, “I think you did grow wings. You just forgot how to use them.”
The young man studied the boy, a growing awareness creeping into his chest. The eyes. The lopsided grin. The voice that used to fill his head before it got too loud in the world. He still has the same shirt; it's now brown, it’s old. It shrank in size. It smells like camphor now.
The boy just smiled. “I'm glad that part of you still remembers. You still believe, do you?”
The young man stood, suddenly lighter. He looked at his hands, calloused from years of writing and studying and reaching and letting go. He looked at the boy again and saw not just a child, but a promise.
“I did grow wings,” he whispered. “Didn’t I?”
“Yeah,” the boy nodded. “You made it out. Keep surviving. You’re now far ahead of me. Continue what we started. You keep going. That’s flight, even if it doesn’t feel like flying. I'm sure you passed all your exams.”
The man looked up. The clouds had broken open, sunlight spilling through in golden streaks.
He picked up the paper airplane and launched it into the wind. It soared, like wings.
He felt it—that weightless, fragile hope.
Not all wings are feathers. Some are made of patience and perseverance.
And some, of the memory of a child who never stopped waiting to fly.
Just a young man, alone, sitting on a rusty swing that doesn't even fit him.
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Words & Photo | Clarry Rabaja
