As land dwellers, we constantly fall in the middle.

This world is practically made up with half ocean and half welkin. Trying to make us feel better about the land we live on, poets even created something as ridiculous as “horizon”—which is basically nothing but a linear line. Fact is, this world is filled with creatures in flight, and the not gifted ones, are discarded and smashed to the ground. Hard.

I was ten when I swam in the ocean for the first time. The airplane was late, and I didn’t end up at the beach until six o’clock in the evening— but I ignored the rising tides and walked right into the cold water, leaving my mother behind, worriedly looking at the me in my tiny orange bunny bathing suit as I stepped into the endless dark blue.

I tried breast stroke at first, but after realizing I was being pushed back instead of going forward, I started swimming in free style. Noticing the immediate progress, I got excited, and after a couple of strokes, I started slapping the water with both of my arms at once. However, the waves started to take my place as I soon started to use out my breath, but I just kept on kicking and smashing my arms, as hard as I could. For one stroke, I felt like the kind of flying fish I once saw on the discovery channel—hopping out of the surface, water beads flying in line with the arch of its body, and freezing on the screen as the narrator threw in some big words. When the slow motion effect was over, the next wave threw me right back to the shallow.

I probably looked like a tomato when my mother rushed to my side. My face was fevering for oxygen, and every inch of my skin was burning from those ignorant smashes I created against the ocean. My mother was furious since all she agreed was for me to fetch some water to build a sand castle.
I had always felt sorry for wingless species—we’re like my sister’s Barbie dolls: always missing a part. Why do birds get to live in the sky, and fishes, lucky enough to fly in the water? While I lied on the beach, listening to my mother’s endless scolding, ocean waves still touching my feet once in a while, a thought struck me—maybe, those Barbies were supposed to build their own missing legs. Just maybe, those fears and pains it takes to grow our own wings are the special gifts given to us seemingly pathetic land dwellers.