On the last day of the year, twenty-five hundred black birds fell from the sky. They were flying and suddenly one by one they just dropped, sinking to the earth- their final flight. What happened up there we will never know. Their little hearts just stopped, their wings frozen. It was an ordinary day if you don't count the tornado that struck out of season in another part of the state.

Some say the birds were scared to death, and some say this kind of thing just happens every once in a while.

I am high up in the sky, I am one of the birds and I am flying. I look down through the darkness where I can barely make out the roof tops, wintering trees, creeks, and fields. My black feathers catch the light from the town. I don't think about it being new years eve, and I don't know this is my last flight. I catch the wind and I float. I look to my left and I see more of my kind. I look to my right and follow the others. We swerve as a group, wings almost touching, a black swarm in the sky. Perhaps there was a flash of lightning when we all stopped flying at thirty minutes to midnight. Perhaps one heart stopped just a few minutes or seconds before the others. Maybe I saw what was happening, and was helpless to stop it. Maybe I flapped my wings harder than usual to try to break free from the group, from this sudden airborne terror. Maybe I was the first to go. My bird body suddenly rendered useless against this invisible force that took us all. Twenty-five hundred of us (they will revise our numbers to quell the panic). We dropped hard from the sky and into the streets of a small southern town. Maybe we were chosen for this task- perhaps we had been training for it our whole lives, a strange kamikaze mission.

But I would rather think about flying as I catch the wind and float on the currents...

X.