There is a girl who sits under a willow tree.
Every day, she goes and raises herself onto its sturdy, worn branches. Pieces of iridescent glass line its leaves, chiming in their colorful chorus. A thousand colors in a thousand shadows hang around her, humming. A gentle breeze tussles her chestnut hair into spider web strands which criss-cross her face. A broken and beautiful mosaic, she closes her chocolate eyes and bows her head.
And then her whispers come:
As a flash flood, as falling leaves floating on an Autumn breeze, as thunder, as the whistle of a boiling tea kettle, as the hum of a stereo's speaker, as a bird's sorrowful song and a drum's gentle cadence.
They leave her dainty lips, sprout legs of their own and dance and play on the summer's breeze. This girl, as shattered as the bottles that surround her, is praying. She repeats the same words over and over again. They flood from her lips as if her dam has broken. And with each utter of this phrase, there is a wish, a dream, a hope,
"Fly me away from here."

There is a boy who sits in a hospital room.
Every day, he places his calloused hand on the door handle, and wishes. His wish is simple enough; to open the white door, and not recognize the figure lying broken in the crisp sheets.
The incandescent lights hum around him in a low buzz, magnified by his hope. The hospital is busy today. Gwyneth, the director of nursing, sees him enter, and greets his emerald eyes with a sympathetic nod. Hopefully optimistic, he fumbles a half-smile back, takes a deep breath, and opens the door.
Unfortunately today, his wish has not been realized.
With a heavy heart, he retrieves the plastic chair from the west-facing corner. In this blistery winter day, words from the past echo through his empty self.
It was summer, then. The spontaneity of what they might have called a future stretched out before them like an endless road.
Their tree had been younger; strong and lithe. He held the newly strung glass up to her in what was a comfortable, warm silence. She didn’t jump so much as float down when she broke his heart that day…
He thought she was part angel ever since.

It was Gwyneth who pulled him from the memory; her big crimson ringlets restrained into a bun perched on the back of her head. She bustles around, doing the things nurses do: checking vitals, making notes on a little clipboard about a person she never knew. Her consolation is a pat on the shoulder, gentle and pitiful at the same time.
The door closes with a small moan and with each tick of the analog wall clock he slips deeper and deeper back to the time when a voice caressed those butterflies in his stomach, sending them all a flutter with the wink of that smile; a time when those butterflies were still alive. Before reality’s cold fist crushed them into a fine, poisonous powder.
He returned to the willow every so often after that cruel day. He would feel the dewy grass between his fingers as he fell to his knees. Something would stream down his face like an eternal river and a sound would escape him that sounded so awful, it can only be described as the pain and agony and suffering you endure when you hear that kind of news. He would close his eyes and whisper sweet nothings to the tree. Which seemed altogether silly but necessary. They weren’t prayers, per say. Instead, they might best be called anemic, pathetic wishes, cast wildly into a pool with the mere hope that everything was a dream and one fine morning, he’d wake up.
… I need to tell you something…
The figure in the sheets does not move.
…Promise me you won’t freak out…
Her voice is silent, her lips are still.
…Pancreatic Cancer: stage four…
Her deep chocolate eyes remain closed, her chestnut hair lost to chemotherapy.
…There’s always chemotherapy…
Her hands, always busy with practicing the cello, lie immobile at her sides.
…
Hands that allowed her to fly away from here; they had granted a scholarship to Julliard.
…Six to ten months left…
Hands that he now held in his own, and were sweetened by the salt of tendered tears.


There is a boy whose wishes were not granted.
There is a girl who will remain perpetually seventeen.
She is lowered into the ground, her pulse forever ceased, her hands eternally motionless.
The willow tree stands tall, its nimble branches dancing in the wind.
The pieces of glance still dangle from its limbs, but their color is drained, resulting in monotonous shades of gray.
The boy is there, as he always will be, ceaselessly wishing.
In her everlasting wishes, she flies beneath their willow tree.