Sometimes
         I feel a well
                   dug deep
         into my heart
  I try to stop it
but it quickly
becomes ocean
  and overflows  
     into great tsunami
          rises over all the levees
             rushes past dams                  
               breaks down tall
                   city structures,
              edifices crumbling
           in its path
     all the squid and octopi
    skitting forth
in wild pulses,
tentacles entangled
     in doorways and rooves
        slipping through narrow
                window-openings
                   as they pour ink
                       in clouds,
                         shifting shapes
                          in cephalopod excitement
                            while blue whales
                            and humpbacks
                               breach over bridges,
                             phosphorescent jellies
                          light up
                       the dark streets of
                      my arteries
                     electric eels illuminate
                    the alleyways of
                   desolation's thick syrup
                     and I cannot stop it even
                            if I wanted to,
                   these darkened,
                     swirling waves
I am both floating and flying
like a jumping manta ray
curling around the ferries
bobbing in seahorse iridescence
weaving between buses
as if they were corals

And when the storm subsides,
colorful rockpools form,
rich in diversity
It is there,
in between the
multicolored ***** and
succulent shellfish,
in a mermaid's
       voluptuous smile
and turquoise eye
that I see you,
so crystal clear
                I could reach out              
                      and bring you to me,          
                         holding you tight
                         until the
                gentle break
     of
          morning

Icarus washes up on Miami Beach over the spring break of 2k16 and finds a world where the gods roam the streets,
where his wax wings burned themselves into trenches of scars down his back,
where we warn our children of the dangers of flying too high,
but forget the part about the riptides waiting if you fly too low.

He asks Siri how far away the sun is,
finds Apollo in the red rocks of New Mexico
off I-40 just outside of Albuquerque,
alone and basking in the heat.
The ice caps are melting.

The sun still hurts to touch,
burning Icarus's hands and leaving fingerprints in the feathers of his melted wings,
but Apollo is much kinder now,
soothing the skin cancer with freckles and soft touches.
It no longer feels like a damning.

This is what happens to the children of tragedies:
they flinch too much,
they fall too hard,
they're fragile as glass but immune to everything the world can throw at them.
Icarus flinches at the sound of the oceans.
He knows the wrath of Poseidon.

Icarus rises from the dead with his irises washed white
and his rips etched with Hades's name:
he should have been a child of Persephone,
spring in his hands and flowers in his hair.
He should have spent his days sprawled in the sun's caress.
He should have been infinite.

Icarus flinches too much.
That's what everyone keeps telling him.
He flinches too much at every lifted voice and crashing wave and
he flinches too much when he feels sunshine on his face.
Icarus is sorry for flinching too much.
Icarus is trying not to flinch too much.
Icarus is sorry that it's taking so long to just get over his trauma and stop flinching so much--
sorry.

He doesn't know what to do now that he's touched the sun
and this time it didn't burn.
He wanted it to burn.
He wants to burn.
He wants to feel his bones breaking all over again because
that's the only time he doesn't feel like he needs to be in control.
Why is he chasing things that hurt?
Why does he feel
like he deserves to hurt?
He deserves to crash.

He finally touched the sun.
Icarus feels empty, and
he's still flinching.