Icarus: The Weight of a Name

Perhaps, in some other world,
Icarus did not fall in love with the god
with fool's gold for hair

In this world,
Icarus slathers on sunscreen
before heading to the beach,
admires the waves instead of the sun
He puts on his sunglasses when he heads outside,
moves to Seattle, where it's cloudy year-round

In this world,
teenage poets do not scream at their professors
about how the ancient poets
did Icarus wrong

They do not go home
to rewrite the story
To write Icarus as the boy who flew,
instead of the boy who fell

Perhaps in this world,
the children are not scared
to spread their wings as he did,
to soar

Or perhaps,
in this world,
they do not yet know
they have wings at all

   - For in this world, nobody knows the name Icarus