Tears of the Sky
by Ana Nieto
I was looking down at my muddy feet as I was walking toward the cliff. It was raining in my eyes as it was in the sky. I stopped at the cliff and lifted my eyes from the dirty ground. Through the rain I saw a boy who was sitting in the mud, his face was resting on his knees with his little arms around his legs. He was a boy like me. I kept walking towards the cliff and passed by him. When I was about to take that last step of my life off the edge of the cliff, he lifted his arms quickly and with his cold white tiny hands he grabbed my hand in his and pulled it to his chest. “Please…” he said, “Please… don´t.”
I looked down at him, puzzled. His face was covered with blood and the rain had spread it all over his face. I noticed something that amazed me; he was crying blood. I kneeled down beside him, something about him seemed very familiar. It was as if I was bound to him someway, somehow. Why would he stop me from jumping off the cliff? Why would he save me? I wondered, confused.
I felt a cool breeze that made me shiver while he looked at me. His big blue eyes widely opened and shone like crystals while a sea of sadness filled his frowned little face. Even when we seemed to understand each other with our eyes, there was still a mystery that troubled me. Silence reigned the earth in those moments. The boy then hugged me. He was holding onto something. He was holding not onto me, but onto my life. He was holding it tight, as if he did not want my life to go away, nor to end. His tears slid all the way down to my shirt, but strangely my shirt wouldn´t stain with the blood of his tears. Then, I found out something else; his skinny body was filled with wounds.
A horrible thought struck my head. How could have I done such a terrible thing? At that moment it was all clear for me. Why would I steal his life filled with oportunities? Why would I take away from him the joy of seeing the sun rise another day, only to feel that he´s alive? Why would I limit a life that in the end does not belong to me?
In that very instant of life I understood him in his grief, I understood it all. It was me who was crying. That boy was me. It was calling me from deep deep inside. The sadness that filled the boy was my own. In his own whole self he was me, and I was him; we were the same.
It was as if he knew what I was thinking and feeling. He knew that I had understood, he knew it all. So he looked up once again and joy covered his face with a smile. He hugged me tighter than ever before as if he were saying good-bye, and slowly dissapeared from my arms. When he was there no longer I ended up holding onto my life as the crying sky stopped its tears.