I wanna fly higher than Icarus.
Not despite the sun—because of it.
I want my ambition to blister,
want my dreams to hiss as they peel off me mid-air.
Let the sky flay me open, I’ll still reach.
Icarus laughed as he fell.
Everyone forgets that part.
They teach the melting, the hubris, the splash.
But not the laugh.
Not the moment he realized:
the air was his to command,
for just one godless, golden second.
I hath never seen a man so alive right before dying.
Not in temples, not in love, not in war.
Only in the freefall.
He didn’t fall because he failed.
He fell because he tried.
And maybe that’s the holiest thing a mortal can do—
to look God in the eye
and say:
“I know I’m wax. Watch me rise anyway.”
So burn me.
Turn me into a cautionary tale in textbooks.
But don’t forget to mention:
I laughed too.
And it echoed all the way down.