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Enchanting night, with stars gleaming incandescent in the dark and humbling sky, suspended like glittering jewels. They shimmer on us, far below and finding joy in a not-so-remote corner of the globe. They shine for us, and for you, most of all.

You bound and leap through soft and dewy grass, and I have never seen you so happy. You are free from lies and hypocrisy. You are free to be you, with all passions and flaws and beauty flickering in and out of your character as they please. Life is good and getting better by the second. Or at least that's what you think, and you've persuaded the stars; they feel your elation, and they wink and twinkle back at you.

In your -- in our joyful moment -- I love you more intensely than ever. I reach for you, I want to embrace you, but you slip away and flit along the grass to the base of the sharp promontory that rises above us. You race birdlike up the incline with me stumbling behind you.

"What are you doing?" I cry, breathless, amusement warming my stiff tongue.

"Getting closer to the sky," you say eagerly, steadily climbing.

I laugh and tell you how ridiculous you are.

You reach the top before I do, and stand there at the edge where everything gives way to vacuous space, your arms spread, trying to embrace the elusive wind. I reach the top, and take a seat near where you stand, but I'm not so daring as you are; I never was. "Have you touched the stars yet?" I ask, smiling.

"No," you say, your face to the sparkling sky, "but if only I could just fly."

Your eyes are wild, and you really want to spread your wings - however nonexistent - and become the stars' playmate. You look at me with an expression I've never seen, and I almost believe that you could soar.

"Watch me fly," you whisper, your voice quaking with something like madness. You take half a step off of the cliff, one foot hanging over the abyss. I watch you, and you hover over it, one leg in the air, your arms spread like an eagle's wings, teetering on the edge of this world. I get nervous. You start to lose your balance, and instinctively, I grab for your shirt and pull you back to solid ground.

"Look," you murmur wistfully. "I almost flew. I was almost free." Then your mood changes again, and you laugh, and I laugh with you.

Nonetheless, I tremble with the thought of losing you to that same wind, or even to the starry sky. You thought you could fly, rise above all this. You almost fell.

The world almost ended, and the stars almost plunged with you.

You reach for my tremulous hands and kiss my quavering lips. There is a frenzied joy on your tongue. "I love you," you whisper on my mouth.

This is your finest hour, the closest to freedom you've ever been.

It was merely a few days before your darkest.

Life did not get better. You were free that night with me under the sky, but over time, you were swallowed again by the hypocrisy and the lies, that life you detested. You felt as if there was no way out. Was there? You were beautiful that night. God, you were always beautiful, even in the utmost despair. You were beautiful the night that you jumped, I'm sure, and the angels must have wept sweet tears to see you fall. I'm sure they wanted to see you fly almost as much as you did. There must have been another way.

What did you want? Another chance at freedom? Did you want to fly? To shed the burdens of this realm and soar to the next? You leapt, but maybe the pain of this world held you down.

You kissed merciless earth when you could have been kissing me.

And I'm sitting here, on a grassy knoll in a not-so-remote corner of earth, without you, and without the joy. And the sky is different tonight, unforgiving. And I'm waiting -- waiting for the world to end -- but the stars haven't yet fallen from the heavens.

But there are a few more hours until daylight. I'm waiting for the sky to crash down on me, to envelop me. I almost wish for it.

I think I spy a star falling from night's black curtain, an angel falling with you -- for you -- from heaven.

I hold my breath and wait for the rest.