Icarus & the Sun

 I loved you as Icarus loved the sun.

I read this quote on my Pinterest board a few months back, and while it may have left the landscape of my phone’s screen, it left an indelible inscription within the jumble that I call my mind.

Reading this quote at first glance implies the archetype of the clichéd metaphor of Icarus, a man whose growing thirst for glory brought him down, his greed being mightier than the endurance of his wings. But the classicalism that controls my mind made my imagination rake over these words countless times, ultimately metamorphosing me into Icarus, seeing traces of my soul in a phrase coined to capture his ironic fall from the skies. 

I loved you like Icarus loved the sun. 

Knowing that you would eventually be my unraveling, I still chose to seek momentary solace by basking in your warmth. Self-destructive? Or maybe just clinically insane. Or maybe the Greeks were right when they said that beauty is terror; whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. 

Just like the sun’s glaring red hues terrified Icarus, but at the same time called out to him like a siren bathed in crimson. Maybe the oxymoronic relation of beauty and terror is more than just a seemingly contradictory term; perhaps it is, after all, the palpable nerves that overtake our essence upon viewing something we love that lure us even closer, despite our minds telling us better. Maybe love really is the knife we turn inside us, and maybe we really are only insane on occasions when our hearts are touched, because, after all, who can ever be sane in the face of terror?