Icarus

Icarus

I am left in a tower with shadows on my walls. I don’t blow out the candle for fear that they will consume me, like beasts afraid of the light. This is a myth, only it’s a faerie tale, but not really, because it’s just a dream. It smells damp in here, and the walls are old with mold and cracks that look like paths that lead somewhere. I wonder where. I spend my days building these wings, from my candles wax tears and the feathers that flutter by every now and then through my window. I could go months with out a single feather.
It’s cold here. Cold like emptiness, when you can’t sleep and can only dream. Your eyes won’t close even though your eye lids feel heavy, with sand maybe, or with pain. The heavy weight of the tears you cannot find, no matter how many scars are left behind. No matter how bruised your eyes look, or how concave you may appear. Your rib cage echoing with your heart beat, your hips pressing hard against your skin, trying to fight free of the flesh. I make my wings, for I will fly. And when I do I will eat, and cry, and laugh. Dance with beautiful men, beautiful women with flowing hair and humble breasts and full lips.
I remember a woman once, I remember she sang. She sang about the girl who awoke with, “true love’s first kiss.” She sang about the shard of glass in the eye of a boy, a girl who rode on the back of a reindeer, flew with a crow, and melted the glass with the tears she found only when she found the boy. She sang about a tea party and mad cat with a grin like a crescent moon, and a baby that turned to a pig. She smiled for her tomorrow's and sobbed for all her yesterdays. I think she loved. I remember a woman who loved. She cried when they took the baby away, she cried because she could not hear its screams, a dead child cannot scream. “It was a girl,” she whispered once, this woman who loved.
I don’t remember much else, now all there is for me is this window, where I can watch the ocean crash against this cliff. The waves are like monsters, with fat fingered hands, that are wrinkled like what I remember. Grapes left long in the sun, bubbles and candles and a metal tub that smelled of lavender and gardenia like a garden. These waves try to climb up and kiss the ground because really they are giants that were cast down by the gods. The woman sang of them as well, I have a vague recollection of kissing her once, a kiss like a lost boy, who flies with his thoughts, content with his pan pipe and lyre. “He gave the pretty lady, a thimble,” she whispered, “a kiss.”
I dreamt of death again, this morning. I dreamt someone had left and that there was nothing, but tangles of hair and spider web disease. I dreamt of candles being blown out, and exploding stars that leave burns on my skin and ash on my bones. I dreamt of a beautiful star, large like a life that cannot be mine. I dreamt of holding it in the palm of my hand and kissing it so that my lips burned with satisfaction and greed. Maybe pride. “The sun will burn you, and you will fall,” a man once said. I remember this man once loved.
I dreamt of dancing creatures, like Egyptian love. Palms flat to the sky as if begging for something more than what they had. I dreamt of walls, and babies drowning, food for the alligators and crocodiles of some river. A long river, maybe the life line of the gods, holy Aphrodite’s love line. I dreamt of plagues, and famine, I dreamt of disease and war, and fire burning to fuel some new religion, now fueled by fear and guilt.
Last night I prayed, only I don’t know to what. But feathers blew through my window like an empty woman’s songs, or a down pour of water like rain. And my wings were fastened by spirit fingers, not my own. The wax and the feathers creating my freedom. I heard chanting last night, and an unknown voice that I’ve heard before, “the sun will burn you, and you will fall. The salt will sting and you will stumble.” The wings fit perfectly on my back, as if they were made of my hollow bone. Carrying me to where I need to be.
I examined my self, before I left. Wondering why my veins bulged green and blue from under my skin, pale like a calla lily, pale like a corpse or something more. Pale like cold and imprisonment. Pale like Selene and her fifty daughters. My veins like rose stems or thin garden snakes. Sometimes I wondered if anything still flowed through them, if I was hollow like a doll. If I could open myself and see inside and if anything was out of order I could just fix it and be new. I fingered my hips, fearing that they would tear away my skin, like my ribs, the smooth indentation of my stomach. The hunger no longer pains me.
Then I flew. And it was ecstasy, like a drug only the gods could inhale, inject, drink. It was all the myths that were really fairytales, but not really because they were dreams. Perfection, until I saw my star. My star that satisfaction brings, burning bright like Apollo’s chariot. My gem star, love star, bright star, my star. I only wanted to touch it. “It will burn you.” I only want to kiss it. “You will fall.”
My skin cried the tears I could not, as I got closer to my star, My skin burning with what I thought was passion, but felt like greed, and deception. It felt like pride and want and need, burning through me. Ignorance told me it was love.  But the woman’s love had burned differently, only it burned inside. But then my wings gave out, melting like a candle that has been burning a lifetime or more. The wax and feathers coating my sores, bruises, scars, burns, burns like failure. And I fell, feeling all the hands I could not hold, slipping through their fingers, like the promise of human flight, or true love, the promise of a painless death.
And I fell, with my heart in my throat, choking on my fantasies. It seemed like no time had passed until I felt the fat fingered hands of the waves, the monsters, pulling me down, to become one of them, a fallen angel boy, a fallen angel girl, with melting wax wings and no tomorrow's to smile about, but every yesterday to bring me to my knees sobbing. And once I could feel the sting of salt on my wounds, I was with the woman who loved, and I realized she loved me.  


~Fin~ *Tink*