GIVE ME LARGER WHITE WINGS

The flat was stifling, and Ethel drifted to the window. The heat had already settled, though a faint breeze brushed the curtains.
It must be me who feels this suffocating weight, she thought, a tight knot in her throat cutting off her breath. The sensation was all too familiara blend of weakness, emptiness, and sheer indifference. Her legs trembled, her mind dimmed as though someone had flicked a single switch in the darkness.

She collapsed onto the bed and almost instantly slipped into sleep.
At first the dream was a jumble of disjointed voices, footsteps echoing up an unknown staircase, a lanterns glow through fog. Then everything cleared. She became a bird, her wings vast and white, light and sharp as the fresh breath that follows a long silence. She rose above a city that glittered below, trembling with countless lights like a scattering of tiny worlds.

The city was unfamiliar, yet felt oddly like home. Tall shadows of buildings stretched upward, seeming to reach for the stars. Between them lay bridges, canyonlike streets, and a feeling of freedom that could not be described, only sensed. It was easy there. Suddenly she remembered how she could be: not weary, not craving approval, not cramped inside simply alive.

Free.

She swooped over the city, darting between rooftops, grazing the cool air with her wings, and for a moment it seemed this would last forever. Then an invisible memory tugged her downward.

I need to lie down, a voiceher own, distantcalled out.

The world shivered. Light fractured.

She began to fall, gently as a feather, returning to the very stuffy room where it all began.

Ethel snapped awake as if someone had called her name. The room met her with the same air, now feeling colder, as though a piece of herself had stayed behind in that city of lights and winged shadows. She rose slowly, sitting on the edge of the bed. The silence was almost palpable, like a record stuck on one note. The world around her seemed familiar yet alien, as if the walls had shifted while she slept.

She ran her hand over her chestwhere in the dream her wings had beat. Her fingers brushed only the fabric of her Tshirt.

Strange I was almost flying, she whispered, though the memory of the dream was already melting like damp snow on her palms. All that remained was a faint stir of air inside her, barely noticeable but undeniably present.

Then she understood: the dream was not about the flight. It was not about a city whose name could not be spoken. It was about being tired of living on earth where every step felt like a debt. It told her she needed a different sky. It reminded her that wings were not a fancy, but an ancient, almost forgotten memory.

She held her breath, not to scare that feeling away, and whispered into the darkness:

If I ever dare Ill go back there. Ill truly take off.

In the same instant a quiet voice answered from within:

Youve already begun.

She stood at the window for a long while, watching the night slowly surrender its hold. Shadows thinned, the sky lightened, and it seemed the world inhaled before diving back into its usual bustle.

Inside her, something had changedsubtly, silently, irrevocably. She gazed toward the horizon, where a thin line of light divided the world into before and after. In that moment she realized she no longer feared her own frailties, her emptiness, or the indifferent fatigue that often rolled over her like a wave.

She understood that the wings were not merely a dream; they were part of her.

She closed her eyes slowly, pressed her palm to her heart, feeling a quiet thump confirming her thoughtsoft, unpretentious, yet resolute.

She murmured:

Enough living for others expectations. Enough tolerating. Enough waiting for permission to be myself.

And in that instant something unfurled inside hernot wings, but something deeper, as if her soul, long crouched in darkness, finally stood upright.

She opened her eyes to a palepink sky, the first morning light resting gently on her face. She stepped back from the window and felt the floor beneath her quiver. Or perhaps the world itself shivered. It mattered little. What mattered was that she no longer felt herself falling.

She inhaled deeplythe first truly free breath in many monthsand said aloud, clear and calm, as if making a vow:

I will rise. On my own. To the heights my dreams sketch.

No more suffocating flat would ever become her cage. She turned, her steps light, almost airynot because she hurried, but because a person who has found their own wings never returns to who they once were.

And that, she learned, is the true freedom: to trust the quiet strength already within and let it lift you beyond every imagined limit.