aisan l. afshar

The day I kissed you goodbye was the day I felt like the king of the blind, and it was just like
him that I aspired to fly.

You see when they saw his throne among the clouds, and hundreds of eagles straining the golden
chains with which they were bound, all they did was laugh; little did they know, that from above,
leaning against the satin, sipping on wine, all the king cared about was the sun.

That he and the eagles were the same, and the plebian fools that laughed, were nothing but dots
under their reign. He and Icarus were the same, and where Icarus was scorned, the King
remained. He and I were the same, in that we touched the sky while everyone thought we were
drunk or insane.

It wasn’t the threat of insanity that drove us off the ground, it was the opportunity to do what no
one ever had. Choosing to be loved by the sun, meant more than basking in the light. It meant
breaking out of chains that sung, for years, of tales of broken love. It meant being lovers with the
flight, and the air and the flapping of feathers, that single-handedly would never be able to fly. It
meant loving the weightless, adoring the sun, and it meant letting go. Of gravity, of ground, and
you.

So I spread my arms, just as he must have on his throne, and closed my eyes, just as he did all
alone. Even in the dark corners of my mind, I felt the golden touch of the sun and knew that he
must have felt the same, even as he was adorned with literal threads of gold.

Truly loved.

Aisan L. Afshar is currently studying English Literature as an undergraduate at the University of Tehran and has only been previously published in the Australian Writer's center (furious fiction, June edition, 2019).