Icarus’s Curse

By Georgia Svourenos

Contributor

As she gazed at his unconscious body, lips parted and lightly snoring, she couldn’t overcome her sudden need to touch him. Since the moment she laid her eyes on him, almost a decade prior, she felt an attachment, a cord permanently suspended between them. Sometimes that cord was taught and tight and he was present. Other times, that cord was limp and loose, for such a long while at times that she would wonder if the cord disappeared. Inevitably, be it days, weeks, months, or even years, the cord would be reinforced, stronger than before.

What they had was a weakness, a disease. This isn’t normal, she would tell herself. But then she would look into his eyes or hear his unmistakable laughter and forget all about her worries; she could laugh with him until her last breath. Then she remembered a story she was told as a child. A story about a boy with wings crafted by feathers and wax. His father had warned him not to fly too close to the water, for fear of water touching the wings and dismantling them. He told his beloved son to avoid the sun, as well, for fear that the heat would melt the wax that held the feathers together. He should stay in the middle, stay safe.

He would eventually succumb to hubris and fly too close to the sun, his fate

foreshadowed by his father’s warnings.

She sometimes felt like that boy, flying too close to the sun, responsible for her own demise.

She wasn’t scared, she simply savored every moment a little more until she, too,

would be enclosed by the crashing waves.