I loved you as Icarus loved the sun—too close, too much.

What if I told you I was Icarus incarnate? Ignored Daedalus’ instructions not to fly too close to the sun and causing the beeswax in my wings to melt. Neglected the warning voices inside my head because I fell deaf to any loud common senses. Plunged myself into the hands of fate and drowned in the sea of my melancholy. Falling for you, and to my own death.

I was told to set myself free but be wary of the extremes. To not fly too high to meet my doom or too low to soak my feathers and weight me down under, pulling me into the sea. But with the sun being your eyes I know beyond reasonable doubt that I have written my downfall in the stars. I know I could only wish to not be swept up in the wonder of your smile, or to have the might to resist your charms. For I can’t help but resigning myself to be the scattered debris, pulled into you by gravity.

I drifted too close to the sun, gave in to the temptation and let my guard down.

As when I was but a free bird soaring through the sky, the adrenaline rushed to my head as I looked up towards heaven — the place of the gods, the sanctuary of my goddess of beauty, you. This feeling is quite something, like I am one flick of the fingertips away from spinning the odds of getting closer to the gods than any other mortal human had before.

And in a moment of sheer madness, I lost all sense of reason, I lacked the foresight to understand where my little hands of fool would nudge me into. I flew and flew, though in every flap of wings I burnt, my feet shed a trail of faith in my wake. Then, once upon a time in history, blinded by the mirage to fetch the far-fetched, Icarus let his guard down and paid the ultimate price.

But what if this was set in Icarus’ ambition all along? To love the sun and incinerate. To kiss the lips that burns and earn himself a taste of death?

Cause in truth, I did walk into my fate with an intention. You are the sun that lit me up and made me reborn with glory. And I want to love you without fear.

I want to touch you with intensity, so intimate you feel my skin pulsating as you surge life within me, my heart threatening to spring out of my ribcage as it beats your name like a choir. I want to fix you with my thoughtful look, until it occurs to you that my orbs are the colour of sun-beamed earth and it reflects only the vision of you and me sewn together as one. I want to melt into you, to be so terribly close to you that my own self evaporates into thin air with only my rotten soul remains.

And at last, I want to brazenly hook my eyes into yours. Though by that, I am only searching to find myself; for I know already, that I am part of you. And that my chapter only begins and ends with you.

The poet has penned down its allegory, they said the sun and the ocean are lovers.

So as I crashed down into the sea with fragments that are left in me, I plunged and plunged with the pieces of you I could seize. I drenched myself with your grace spreading its form and becoming my alternate wings. I felt so safe, so whole, even though the hellfire has blown me into parts and smitheerens as I fall like a broken-winged bird. And when I touched the sea I knew, I am born again as your love completed me. I knew, I have never felt more alive within the clutch of the death.

Now that I am down beneath in the abyss of the waves, I want to tell you the tale of how the ocean loved the sun — a story of two parallel worlds. I was the Icarus, I lost myself in the brink of collapse and coalition. Stranded in the tides of doubt and indifference. But then I saw you, I saw your light with my eyes who used to see the darkest sin. I saw the serene after the storm. I saw conviction and love, love, love. Now I am one with the waves, and you can call me ocean.

I was the Icarus and you are my sun. I loved you too close, too much, too real. And for all that, my love for you will still burn without respite. And for all that, I will keep falling for you on earth, in death, and in the afterlife.