maybe icarus loved the sun
because love can burn like a cigarette
there is a madness to love that tastes like salt. we sit at the edge of the ocean and talk about the beauty of the waves, the way they reach for the shore with hungry hands, pulling it in only to be pushed away again. But no one speaks of the undertow—how beneath that rhythm lies a current that could swallow you whole, dragging you into depths that don’t offer return. love is much the same: you learn to swim in it, to hold your breath against its pull, but some are too eager to be consumed, forgetting the ocean can be a cruel goddess.
i think of icarus, not as a fool, but as a lover. he did not fear the sun; he revered it - so wholly, so recklessly, that the thought of distance was unbearable. but it promised it warmth, glory, and the kind of blinding brightness that leaves you unable to see the earth below but above all, it promised him love. he must have believed that love, if true, required such intensity, that to love at all is to court destruction and so he flew, not towards his doom but towards a truth we are all too terrified to speak. passion . it is a flame that devours everything in its path—skin, bone, and soul. there is no end to its hunger.
maybe icarus didn’t fall because he flew too close to the sun.
we are all, in our way, born with wings—fragile things bound together by threads of hope and fear. this passion, our desire tempts us to fly higher, always higher, until the very wax that holds us together melts in the heat of our longing. there is no escape from this. we crave the sun, even as we burn beneath its gaze. we tell ourselves that maybe, just maybe, we can survive the flames, that our love will be the one to transcend the limits of the sky.
its poetic to think how passion is derived from suffering1. the greeks knew of passion, perhaps it was the only thing they truly knew. for passion is not just a spark of desire, it is a slow burn, a bodily state that eats away at us from within. there is a place inside all of us that begs for ruin, for the heat that sears and splits us open. in feeling the molten the visceral truth of passion lies as it rots us from within, as it sinks into the marrow and consumes all that we are, until we are reduced to trembling flesh, charred wings, and salt-soaked bones - because in our desire we know the the heat itself whispers to us, come closer, let me make you whole.
the sun, like this madness, is not gentle. it was never meant to be. it does not hold you with tender hands or cradle you in soft light. it grips you by the throat, forcing you to bear witness to your own unraveling. no, it is a fever in the blood, a force that gnashes its teeth against the barriers we build around ourselves. the kind of passion that makes you lose track of time, of breath, of who you are. you tell yourself you can handle it, that you can balance between the pull of gravity and the intoxication of flight, but the higher you climb, the more the heat licks at your soul, the more the ground becomes a distant memory.
solomon once wrote of passion: “it is necessary that we choose our emotions, in much the same way that we choose our actions.” but does love, in its purest, most maddening form, truly give us a choice? or are we slaves to it? perhaps the real tragedy is not the fall, but the fact that we choose it. love is a decision to step into the fire knowing full well it will burn us beyond recognition. and yet, we lean in, driven by some primal need to feel the heat that makes us forget everything else, like a moth to flame. you think you can hold onto yourself, but love is patient, relentless—it wears you down until you become unrecognizable even to yourself. maybe that’s the truth icarus saw in the sun: that to love is to willingly dissolve. to lose shape, to let the heat twist you into something, just the essence of self - ousia
maybe he fell because he loved it too much.
we talk about passion as if it’s this beautiful, exhilarating force, but we don’t admit how it erodes us, how it claws its way under our skin and strips us of every defense we’ve built. it caresses you with one hand and ravages with the other—letting your heart beat outside your chest, exposed to the air, to the elements. every gust of wind feels like a knife, every touch electric—until, finally, the pain becomes a kind of numbness, and all that’s left is this deep, aching need to keep feeling no matter the cost and isn’t that what we chase? not the comfort or the calm, but the storm. the way love can devour reason, how it makes us reckless, ready to leap without thinking where we’ll land. we always speak of the fall, but rarely do we speak of the flight—the ecstasy of that weightlessness, when every nerve feels alive, every cell burning with a fevered joy. we chase it until we can’t anymore, until the wings we’ve trusted for too long start to fail us.the hunger for something larger than ourselves. the need to become something we’re not, to merge with that consuming heat, as if in its light we might find a version of ourselves that isn’t lonely, that isn’t fractured by fear. but fire doesn’t save us; it only offers destruction as an answer to our yearning.
maybe icarus loved the sun because it taught him what it meant to feel alive. he wanted that last taste of the sun, the feeling of it pressed against his skin, even as it tore him apart. maybe that’s the part we don’t want to admit—maybe he loved the fall.
the fall is not the tragedy. the tragedy would have been never flying at all.
maybe he did love the fall, i think we all do
it feels like a privilege 2 read this