Incandescent

Incandescent;

The sea below is a mouth of teeth and dark forgotten names.

Warnings say its hunger is patient, that it waits for those who climb too high.

Yet my eyes are pinned to the blaze ahead, the living wound in the sky.

If the sun is a blade, let it carve me open and see what I am made of.

//

Edict:

Charts of safe altitudes, diagrams of distance between drowning and combustion.

Voices of rule and reason sketch careful paths in the air, narrow and survivable.

But careful paths feel too much like cages, and I have worn stone and shadow long enough.

I was not given wings to skim the surface like a frightened gull.

//

Ascent;

Wax sweats beneath the feathers, softening with each heartbeat toward the light.

The air thins, sharp and bright, every breath a stolen ember in my chest.

The sea roars its litany of endings, flinging salt up like accusations.

I answer with ascent, with every upward beat that writes my name into the sky.

//

Instability:

The first feather loosens, a pale leaf torn from the fragile tree of my shoulders.

It spins past my hand toward the blue-black depths that have always waited.

The horizon tilts; distant cries shatter against the wind and fall behind me.

Still, my hands reach forward, not downward, fingers spread to touch the burning edge.

//

Defiance:

Let the risk be a covenant, not a curse, signed in wax and heartbeat.

Every warning is a landmark, not a leash, and still the only compass is the blaze ahead.

If the choice is between sinking safely or rising into ruin, let the waves remember my ascent.

I will reach for the sun with open hands, and if I burn, let it be in the shape of my trying.