here is where icarus fell with his waxen wings disappearing,
experiencing hopelessness in mouthfuls, choking on
unswallowed pride. and this is where mother earth held his
funeral, beneath the sweeping movements of the ocean; where
she finally embraced him and lulled him to sleep.
i stand nearby with flowers in my hands, wanting to put them
by his grave, but his death was unmarked and ignored. there is
no tombstone here to which i could dedicate these blossoms.
but why am i compelled to do this? why do we put him on a
pedestal? like haunting, hunting vultures we spiral around
tragedies like his with hungry eyes and hungry hearts. maybe
it isn’t because of the sympathy that we are expressing but of
the sympathy that we are seeking.
maybe, instead of noticing how his ambition tore out his lungs
and taking that as a warning sign, we noticed how that same
ambition caressed his face with bliss and we thought:
what
would it take for me to make that last?
these flowers are a mockery, then. this sentiment i hold for a
boy that flew too high must be a stupid extension of self-pity,
so when i fail, i can tell myself,
hey, at least you didn’t suck so
badly to become a greek tragedy.
why are we so threatened by and terrified of failure that it
cautions us against ambition? why are we forced to temper the
voracious thirst for anything and everything that our instincts
have made for us? why do high school students kill themselves
from stress when we are told that we are
children,
that childhood is the best time of our lives?
is icarus an analogy? is he every teenage boy and girl who
opted to fall because he or she or
they couldn’t fly? how
different is falling anyway?
and is the sun an analogy, too? unattainable standards?
definitions of beauty and intelligence measured solely by
numbers, and if you don’t have an A+ in one, you better have
it in the other if you want to live?
daedalus, too, is he an analogy to our parents? the ones who
equip us with what was and is enough for them, but not
enough for us? why isn’t it enough for us?
is it because we are taught to need more in order to live less?
so, if i give icarus flowers, am i acknowledging that his death
was deserved? if i don’t give him flowers, am i acknowledging
that his death was deserved?
is this how shrödinger felt when he was about to open the box?
icarus’ flowers, the newest paradox. sounds like it could sell.
am i overanalyzing? i think i might be.
i bought the flowers at walmart when they weren’t on sale,
picked the biggest bouquet there of white ones, because they
looked the prettiest, as though someone had taken them
straight out of a poem. in my hands, now, though, they look
kind of ugly; like ghost-pale skin, showing nothing but
vacancy, winter-paper and cold, stilted.
i feel like a liar.
i like to go on philosophical tangents, but really, these flowers
are hideous, and i spent twenty dollars on them. so, i also feel
kind of cheated.
i can’t return them, though, because i didn’t save my receipt; i
don’t think icarus was the kind of person to save receipts either.
maybe his father was, though. if his father was alive today,
he’d collect receipts instead of feathers and duct tape
paper-mache wings for his son to fly out of high school lockers.
each line in the receipts would have been for books and
binders and pens and pencils and band aids and journals and
maybe one day, hospital fees. or maybe not, but if hospital
fees are on there, then flowers will be on there, too.
hopefully, daedalus won’t buy white flowers from walmart.
i throw my bouquet with its fancy wrapping into the water; it
floats, somehow, the flower petals swirling and bobbing in the
water, drawn to an innate belief of surviving, of exposing
themselves even at destruction. maybe i’ll be charged with littering.
and yet, the light of the sun that killed ambition bounces off
the shiny plastic, spelling out an epitaph.
here lies icarus: burdened, burned, buried.
of course, it doesn’t take the blame.