I always thought it was normal to dream of being an angel. Since I was young, I knew they were birthed atop of the Tower, where it was forbidden for anyone to see. I heard the song of their screams across the empty fields, through the whistles that skated across the tops of the prairie grass. And there stood the Tower shaped as a fist, reaching to the sky as the human hand reaches for God.



My mother used to tell me I had a thin soul, far from reality, just dotted with two big brown eyes. Maybe she was right, or maybe my wings just had been ripped from me before I was born.



Sometimes I would put on white dresses, run through the tall grass in the shadows of the Tower and pretend to be an angel. One day I fell to my knees shakily keeping a knife in my palm and cut my hair because it was black.



That same day I saw an angel fly from the Tower, except toward me instead of the other world. The angel picked up my black hair and her hands started to bleed, tears falling down her white cheeks, scarring her preciousness.



“I’m s-sorry, I can’t be…I can’t be like you.” I cried.



My imperfections were bleeding her, yet her red palms held my face as she kissed my dry lips, tasting of tears, “It’s more beautiful to be like you than me. Yet, we are killing each other.”



I grasped onto her bloody palm, feeling surges of pain, “Let me come with you. Let me grow wings.”



“You were never birthed from the Tower.”



“Just promise me.”



“It would be a promise I know I would never be able to keep.”



She held me in her snow white and bloodstained arms as she took us to the Tower, my head cradled in her bleeding neck. She gently laid me on the very top of the Tower, and collapsed.



“I’m no longer a white angel. I’m red and sinned.”



“Sinned?”



“I’ve had the sinner’s touch. I’m red, and dying.”



I cried blue tears above her crippled body as if they would make the blood go away, “I’m sorry…I…”



“You’ve made me like you. And you are more beautiful than I. That is a gift, a gift of sin.”



The last veil of white on her body became her eyes. I killed an angel. Robbed her of her perfect white, as she bled from my black.



Covered in her blood, I gazed at the sky above me, I was where angels were born. I could be reborn with her blood and live for her name. Though I couldn’t give another look at the dead angel, my cowardice had been stronger than I.



I spread my arms out reaching to the life behind me, as the wings that have been ripped of me finally grew, and I flew off of the Tower.