issue 8
// poetry
self-portrait as icarus before the water
by Idia Enoma
boys always fall toward the thing
that kills them. I've decided
falling is the only proof we ever get
that we were airborne at all—feathers keep
turning up in myths as debt: Daedalus paid
in son the way any craftsman pays,
in the thing his hands loved best. Wax
holds no memory of failing, only
the heat was honest. Still, a father
calls a name the wind has already
taken apart, and I keep wondering
why no one asks what the boy saw
on the way down, whether the water
looked like sky long enough to forgive it.
about the author // Idia Enoma
| Idia Enoma is a confessional poet, writer, and photographer from the Hudson Valley. Her work has appeared in Blue Marble Review, Yīn Literary, Eunoia Review, and Polyphony Lit, and is forthcoming in Citron Lit. Recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and an alumna of the Kelly Writers House Summer Workshop, she is currently a first-year student at the University of Pennsylvania. |
Instagram: @idiaenoma
