Icarus was not sad to drown,
Only that he never felt the full burn of the sun.
Still, he must have grinned as he surrendered,
As satisfied as he would ever be --
He’d known Helios,
Flown closer than all who came before.
His singed feathers a symbol of triumph.
The sun would not remember Icarus,
And history would regard him as a fool.
But for a single moment
he had almost touched a star.
Vee Peri Stone is a seventeen-year-old nonbinary Puerto Rican writer, currently working on both poetry and a YA fantasy novel. They live in Nyack, NY.
"Sun Release M8.7-Class Solar Flare on Dec. 17, 2014" by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
