STARLESS EYES

Letter to Icarus

dear icarus,

from the red to the pacific to the atlantic and aegean sea, your feathers have shone upon every shore and still we whisper of who the boy with wings was. we wonder your age, your strength, your recklessness, your father's motives - but we have never questioned your death. we never ask what it must have felt like to touch sky and then be anchored by the very wings that had set you free.

icarus, i wonder what did it feel like to be weightless? to leave behind the father whose decisions chained you to a sepulcher. what was it like to have wings and have them taken from you in the same breath? 

does it feel like falling in love? the rush of euphoria that creeps into your heart and hums in your heart, the spike of adrenaline from knowing you are taking a risk and it will be a disaster. is it like the sudden shallowness of breath when you know you are falling but cannot remember how your lungs work?

because if it is anything like that, icarus, i have fallen too. we have both been burned by the sun and drowned.

but wasn't it worth it? for me it was. no matter that my wings will be mistaken for debris. or that my name will erase from his mind like carvings from limestone.

those of us who have drowned don't wonder about your death. we've lived it. we understand.

oh but icarus loving him was not the sun, it was wings gliding to safety, my fears were the sun, i melted us.

- me

p.s. if you ever see him roaming a beach with one of your feathers around, from the pacific to the arctic, ask the sun to tilt so that it can shine on him. i promise not to burn him this time.