It is easy to think me a fool,
the foolish boy whose foolish dreams
melted his wings and
broke his father’s heart.

What is harder to see:
I knew the math of it all,
remembered the geometry of
wax and feathers
so well I could taste it on my tongue
scraping like cardamom
and sour sweet like tangerines
on the roof of my mouth.
Height and wind speed,
melting points and velocity,
lift and ******,
bird wings turned to equations
I held in my heart.

But oh,
to fly is nothing at all like math.
It is nothing at all like diagrams of
birds and insects and cloud formations.
To see the sun, The Sun, oh,
to spread your fingers through it’s warmth
as the air becomes tangible like the sea,
oh, there was no room in this heart for
the coldness of figures,
they were melted long long before my wings.

So judge, though the sky has never loved you
and I will yearn for the sun, The Sun,
oh,
from the bottom of the sea.