Dear Icarus
Tell me you loved
the sun so much that
you gladly burned for it
and that each feather
on your wings fully embraced
the freedom of the wind.
Tell me the waves
thrashed in ways that
just barely mirrored
your fiery spirit
and that you touched
everything you ever dreamed of,
if only for a moment.
Tell me the smell of smoke
only stoked the fire
in your burning heart.
Tell me it was worth it,
falling from the sky
after tasting the sun.
Don’t tell me
that the sun’s jealousy
spread over your wings
like summer wildfire or
that you couldn’t
swim in the ocean, but
that your regrets could.
Don’t tell me
your passions disintegrated
piece by piece,
becoming ash
alongside your wings.
Don’t tell me
your arms reached up,
but you still couldn’t feel the sky or
that your heart got cut on broken dreams
and drowned in the waves.
Don’t tell me
smoke choked you
on the descent,
making you forget
how to fly.
It wasn’t your fault
that the world simply
was not ready
for the fire
in your soul.
The Echo of Immortality
You are graffiti
on the walls
beneath an overpass
and handprints
pressed into
the drying cement
of a sidewalk.
You are
words on bathroom doors
that scream,
I was here,
and initials etched
into peeling tree bark.
I hear you.
You echo.
But you are also
scribbles on a desk
so easily erased
and chalk on driveways
destroyed by light rain.
You are
sunlight before
a thunderstorm
and dandelion seeds
before the wind blows.
You’re permanent, you’re fading.
But I still hear
your echo.
About the Author:
Lexi Merring is an incoming graduate student at Montclair State University where she will be earning an M.A. in English. Her work is forthcoming in The Central Avenue Poetry Prize, and she has been published in Canvas Literary Journal, Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, and Women Who Write's Goldfinch.