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Upon the Wings of Icarus We Fell
Prose Poetry
“he who flies too close to the sun shall burn”
it is a creed as old as time, but we did nothing to evade it as we rode the flames down, down, down past the grasses of Persephone’s return
the underworld would not welcome us, we who had defied the gods and their designs, and its gates were shut tight like lips that would never again spill secrets
in another world, where tricksters shifted skins as easily as breath goes from lungs, we might have been able to sustain our exile from the fruits of Olympus
“he who looks back will lose what he holds most dear”
oh, Orpheus, you dread fool — your love was lost as soon as you let your gaze skip back
but there is something to be said of passions that dim or disappear
if only we had not clasped our hands, heartbeat pressed to heartbeat, as our wings disintegrated —
oh, what might we have been then?
“he who curses the gods will know their spite”
the gods look down at the ashes of us and wonder what possessed us
we laugh, as if we have the answers, but we have no idea
the passions consumed us until we were nothing but an inferno whose only purpose was to burn
and burn — that we did
