When I Fly Too Close to the Sun I Don’t Smell Melting Wax
I did not ask for a father as an inventor but he could
rig a fire pit or a cane fishing pole just the same
He concocted the formula for my wings by making me
feel free so yes I did jump through the window of his
El Camino like Bo & Luke Duke and when I looked up
midflight the sun felt closer and my ashy flesh did not burn
When he shot me into the air through his cannon arms
I felt death our closest known stranger swim through
that flesh on the way to the abyss that gathers dead children
for haunting but I escaped the eternal trick-or-treat celebration
hiding my face from the flaming eye safely escaping its
magma pupil on the way up so close it melted my best scream
He flew too close drinking and smoking as a lifetime diabetic
I was suspended in the air from the cannon launch as death
splashed and made laps in the pool of his body sipping his veins
not my feeble ones pumping life into the wings we all imagined
***
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Photo by Roel Wijnants/Flickr