Candy dot matrixes fill the skies, and we lick the stars from darkened heavens, relishing in this dream that thunders across the vista of our souls. Is it our souls we share or something more? Do we wallow in self-misery? Or do we dare to dream and dream to fly?

Our wings are sludge dripping with wet moss. Trailing along the sodden soil and muck cementing about our feet, we cannot rise, cannot lift. It’s too hard, an arduous effort of self-misery.

Until the sunshine dries our wings. Until we abandon the darkness and depression that besets us. Standing on craggy rocks of despair, we wait in the light of self-abasement, where tuffs of greenery dried, solidifies about our wings. Thick brine, hardened like our hearts, fall and splinter into a million pieces; the years of slime washing away by the brilliant heat of Sol Invictus; muck and hopes hardened into disbelief crumble away. Like the eagle renewed every seven perfect years, in the newness of streaming light; stretching our wings once blackened, now lovely—see the feathers white? see the feathers bright?—catching pockets of gusting wind; rising higher and higher, the far now far below; burning brighter into the brightness of the sun.

What did we fear when the muck had trapped our feet? Up here it seems impossible to surrender to such base desires. Up here—among the expanse of the firmament, past Luna and comet, past meteor and the Goddess of Love—up here we freefall through space, toward the light of the burning sun. Closer, closer now. We are as Prometheus giving forth of his liver through his writings, feeding the world with his liver. Or Icarus flying too close to the sun, daring to dream, but the closer those dreams come, the more we burn. Until our livers sizzle upon the plate consumed, and our words burn within the minds of those consuming them.

Until at last we lay down our shattered hearts, our strong and vicarious hearts, our diseased and bedridden hearts; all our hearts, young and old, laying them down in sheepskin soft, past the velvet lining of heaven’s door.