Icarus
Wax
and Flight
A father's warning pressed into feather and resin. Fly too low and the sea will claim you; too high and the sun will unmake you.
Between two ruins he chose the sky anyway. A boy made of borrowed wings, certain the warmth above was worth the fall.
Feather
and Resin
Each quill set by hand, each seam sealed in wax. A machine of borrowed flight, trembling at the first true wind.
The Climb
Higher than the warning allowed. The gold of noon closes around him like a second, hungrier sun.
Into
the Sea
Wax gives way to water. What was flight becomes a long, slow descent — remembered now only in bronze and glass.