_“Icarus flew."_

That’s how the old myth ends.

Soft, inevitable, a caution passed between void and star.

Fingers trailing through the thin blue veil of dawn,

brushing constellations still half-asleep in their orbits.

Blazing not just above, _around_, molten heart an altar no mortal meant to approach.

Yet he came anyway.

Not because he sought destruction;

divinity simply demands sacrifice.

To air toward truth is to court silence on your tongue as wings dissolve into ash.

He flew because man cannot kneel forever.

Cursed with want, blessed with reach,

humanity discovering fire, we inquire:

Was it hubris?

Were we born too far from the light to know our place in the dark?

Knees oozing and raw, palms clasped before their flame-bright God.

Clay-sculpted sinner dripping back into the watery womb from which he came.

Greedy thing—

to taste even a lick of the divine.

To let one trembling finger brush the hem of eternity and refuse to burn.

What are we, but sweat-slicked skin and shaky breaths,

panting blindly after Gods?

Flushed not with sin, but with _longing_,

raw, animal hunger to become brighter than bone, heavier than dust.

It is this wanting.

Burning lungs. Trembling limbs.

The weight of a heart still beating when it should have turned to cinder long ago.

Only for its shadow on our flesh as we reach upward until what ashes is all that made us human.

Even if Hades may not greet him warmly; there will be _recognition_.

Quiet nod of one who has seen this story unfold before.

For Icarus is not the first to rise in defiance of the sky, nor the last to fall with grace still melting from his bones.

And cruelty? Oh, it wears no face— it needs none.

The divine does not strike down in wrath; it simply _lets go_.

Let you climb.

Let you believe.

Let your heart swell with faith so strong it blinds you to the wires at your shoulders—

Then…

Just silence.

And feathers spiraling through empty air.

What is fate if not God’s indifference dressed in gold?

A single breath between flight and fracture—

and all along… we were never soaring toward heaven.

We were falling into futility.