Unrequited Sun

Liam Duffy

Salt-caked lips puncture the surface above,

Before lungs inundate with brine.

I still see you pinned in Aegean sky; brilliance blazing

Melting, burning, scarring.

“There is danger in Apollo’s air”

Daedalus warned on a gentle coast,

But one will never learn

Without the urchin sting.

I swallowed fire for a moment–

Amber light on my back outstretched.

Intoxicating in atmosphere,

I tremble under misguided hands.

Warm rays eased a once imprisoned soul.

A shadowed silhouette windswept,

Moth magnetized to marble.

But the Earth began to grow;

Peripeteia present in gravity’s pull,

Poseiden’s second sacrifice, falling.

I try to swim, claw my way through seafoam froth-

A fledgling in Mediterranean waves.

Once weightless wings waterlogged,

Now anchors, pulling to jade depths.

Eyes scorched by sea,

Your inferno shines through leagues.

Feathers embossed on the skin of my back,

Heart of wax, will of stone.

You are so beautiful, my demise.

Golden yolk shrinking, rippling amoeba,

Gone. To be the sun for a moment,

To see with eyes unclouded;

And here I remain, an extinguished candle

At the bottom of the ocean.