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.

the sun doesn’t wake me up anymore i’m so tired all the time from the ache in my bones and the pull of muscle dry clay cracking and flaking like sunburn peeling feeling red and raw underneath it all i want to be clean it takes 7 years to have brand new skin taste and take and on trial again for old crimes i forgot to commit but commitment is hard these days finding bodies in the empty space like the gaps between your fingertips and the narrow swell of your knuckles
my bedroom is dark usually and it’s hard to let any light in and my skin itches and itches as it flakes off into something new again

-- when I have the tenderness of a writhing dragon,
he will paint flowers across my throat

as though to remind me that fires are indelicate,
and that I writhe in a prison made of open space.
-- this man will not smother me with his skin
when we sleep.
-- this man will unhinge the door of my mouth,
and kiss out the bullets stuck under my tongue.
                                                                ­               ---
whatever thousandth day I awaken beside this man,
realizing I have become the flowers he painted
across my throat, by braving my throat,

I will, unchaining myself from the draconic worry,
bring him his coffee in bed, with a smile.

augustine, what have you done to me?
i should feel wildfires without guilt
i should tremble on the cusp between
wishing i could be entirely consumed
and wishing i could erupt.
we should shiver without fear
of melting retribution.
god can hold the candle that drips
hot wax on my nape,
i don't believe they hate what they create.
augustine, you've made me unclean.
we spend hours smearing acid between two
bodies, don't we erode our impurities?

let me tell you what i love about you
love to think of all the possibilities
my knife could so brazenly roam across
the surface of skin so glossy my own
gets tingles just thinking about it

let me tell you what i love about you
we love to make fun of the oceans, and how
boring life is without our own viciousness
our very blood is hedonistic, is it not?
swim away, edge closer to me while i edge closer to you

At what speed would you have to travel to follow the sunset around the earth?
Watching an atmospheric color blaze wrapping its warm blanket arms around the globe infinitely
A spectrum of all the days endings
Pending
Spending
How long would you, could you follow it?
A day
A few days
A few weeks
A decade?
In the empty silent moments
Would you think of who to spend it with
That epic looping vibration of color
Dead-ending.
What would you give up to follow the sunset around the earth?
Who would you follow?

there is ice cream in your hair again, it's strawberry like last summer and pink like broken plastic
there was a pretty boy on 38th street, he made me laugh because i used to think i could only love a six-petaled rose or a green garbage truck. but there he was & i think i might grow old
you hate when i complain, don't you, but that's okay because she'll always kind of make me want to die, or move to venice. either way i wouldn't get to see you again & i guess that's supposed to be sad.

hey isaac, it's good to have you back. i think we both changed a lot, you're a little dizzier now and im a lot less purple. i still can't give you my address because they repainted the old house. isaac, it's such an ugly shade of (beige?) now- it makes me want to forget the last four years. they cut down the juniper trees, too, i saw the dead flowers and i didn't cry
i don't think ill ever grow out of the shower or the floorboards. ill sit here forever, waiting for cement blocks & burning hair & suffocation

alabama sun, it's almost hot here in a sad soggy way
i knew a kid in california who lost all her teeth on a pink plastic skateboard (we were all carrying garbage bags filled with computer cables and ipods and cube-shaped monitors)
there was a girl in england somewhere, too, she was bright bright navy blue and i couldn't stop staring at her glittery skin. my grandma told me it was impolite so i decided to grow antenna eyes like those banana slugs clinging to my neighbor's window.

(i think i'll shave my head and rename myself after the moths that come out once the afterimages of the sun leave the corneas.)

she told me we could live in thailand one day, now look what you've done! i want to live again for the first time since my tiny cells began to divide!