He Was The Sun

He was looking at me with a hunger in his face that boys like me learn to ignore as soon as we can climb a tree.

I have never climbed a tree.

I was curious.

 

“What are you

looking for, sir?”

 

“If I had eyes like yours, I would have started living years ago.” I didn’t

 

know what he meant but 

I trusted him.

 

“What’s your name?”

 

My mother told me never to give my name to a fairy.  My father told me never to get too close to a man who made you feel like every day was an adventure, never to trust a man who made you feel like you could fly.

 

I suppose I was caught up in the thrill of his honey-sweet voice and his exposed biceps.

 

“It’s Icarus.  My name is Icarus.”

 

He leaned

closer.

 

“Don’t get off at your stop.  Stay on the bus with me, Icarus.”

 

I did.

 

His lips tasted as sweet as his voice sounded, but he always felt like 

he had a 

fever 

and I didn’t have any way to save him.  I didn’t have any way to save

myself

either.

 

He was gentle, at first.

But my father was right.

 

He made me feel like every day was an adventure and 

like I could fly.

 

Boys like me, boys who learn to 

pray before they know 

who

they’re praying to,

boys who stop praying as soon as they leave home,

can not fly.

 

They can kiss beautiful blond bus-ride 

men

and they can bend to every whim of the man who first told them they had eyes

like the ocean

but they can’t fly.

 

I can’t fly.

I never could.

 

All I could do was sit on the beach where he left me and cry into my sunburnt hands

and realise I would never be able to enjoy the feeling of ocean water between my 

toes again.

 

But there’s one thing they don’t tell you about boys like me, curly sun-kissed

nobody-needs-you boys, and it’s that they can grow into men who know how

to drown

in their own tears and

stand back up and

look around with their ocean eyes and see the next adventure

and go on it.

 

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Liv Adkins

If you like this poem, it is featured along with many others in my new book, Teardrops and Birdsong! Please consider looking for it on Amazon! :)

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