Icarus
After Bryony Littlefair
When you feel better from this someday— and you will— you’ll stop blaming the sun. A wide morning ray will slant through the window, turning rain spots to sequins, and you’ll name the colors. The million greens of the tree line will seem sharper against the white sky. You’ll feel the comfort of the cat against your back and the weight of the blanket in blessed sleep, the scald and steam of shower as it wakes you to skin. You’ll lay out a proper breakfast, open the bright bergamot jam, spread it with a shiny spoon. And you’ll taste again. You’ll taste sun. In the play of light, you’ll see two guitars on the wall—one wooden, the other its shadow—each beautiful. Though there is still no music, there is the memory of a strum. Not that any of this will rewind the fall or heal the distance, but maybe the dust motes suspended in light will dance slowly enough for you to forget, even for a moment, that he had no wings.
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Ellen Rowland is a writer and editor who leads small, generative poetry workshops on craft and form. She is the author of two collections of haiku and a bi-lingual book of haiku and tanka. You can find her writing in places like One Art, Sheila-Na-Gig, Braided Way, Humana Obscura, and several anthologies, including “The Path to Kindness” and “The Wonder of Small Things” edited by James Crews. Her full-length poetry collections include No Small Thing (Fernwood Press 2023) and In Search of Lost Birds, recently published by Kelsay Books. She lives off the grid with her family on a small farm in Greece. Connect with her on Instagram , Facebook, and Substack.
