by Jasmine C. Griffin
Icarus knew that his father would have called the act that had killed him an act of hubris. However, as his father still called him by his deadname, his words held even less meaning now that Icarus was his son than they had when he was the daughter Dale loved but that never truly existed. He’d been on his own for six years. Been walking balls for three of those six.
In the beginning Icarus went for realness. Even before his top surgery he had something to prove. He walked the Thugs category, though he presented himself much differently in public. After his top surgery, he built up enough muscle definition to hide the scars on his chest, right under his pecs. Got tatted across his stomach to draw attention even further away. Then he’d met Dawn of House Sun and things had changed.
Dawn was real without input from anyone else. Didn’t have to prove who she was to no one. She just was. She just existed. Embodied. She’d been irresistible to him. She always walked Femme. Always walked realness. Always went home with a trophy even if home was a studio apartment in the Bronx that didn’t have working air conditioning.
She never judged Icarus for what he did to survive. For the drugs he pushed. For the lives lost at his hands, even when the dead kept him up at night. No matter how many times he told himself that if they didn’t buy from him, they’d have gotten it somewhere else. He didn’t judge her for the men that bought the body she’d paid good money for. Men who led her into alleyways and parked cars for a couple hundred towards rent and the clothes and makeup that would pull together her next effect on the runway.
He loved her. Loved the way she shined under the spotlight. Loved the way her hips moved when she walked. Loved the way she smiled so brightly he couldn’t look directly at her without bursting into flames. He loved her until the light went out of her eyes and blood spilled from her lips the night the car struck her down. The driver had been high. Icarus blamed himself.
He didn’t know if the man had gotten the stuff from him. It didn’t matter. It was another life his hands had taken anyway. Another angel he had never meant to create.
After the funeral Icarus framed the sketch, he’d done of the house he promised to build Dawn one day. The only good thing that had come out of his father forcing him to follow in his footsteps and study architecture in college.
He stopped selling and started using. Being high helped. He felt weightless. Floating.
Closer to the sky. To the sun. To Dawn.
When he walked the balls, he walked in Dawn’s honor. That night was no different.
He walked the runway. The theme was Celestial Beings. He went shirtless. Fashioned a pair of wings out of the feathers from Dawn’s fans and the wax she used to drip over one of her clients that got off on the pain. Fastened them on using leather from the straps of Dawn’s purses. Wore her lipstick on his lips and covered his lips and eyelids with rhinestones hoping that they would recapture some of her light.
He used more than usual. More than he should have. Covered the needle marks on his arms with body paint and glitter.
He walked out onto the runway in a daze. The music became a living thing. Held a pulse.
Every hand in the crowd became Dawn’s hands, long acrylic nails reaching for him, and he reached back. Spread his arms until the wings stretched out wide enough for him to take flight.
He would do House Sun proud. Do Dawn proud.
The spotlight held a heat that was sharp like the edge of a blade. But Icarus kept walking even as the first drop of wax melted into his skin. The tears running down his cheeks burned hotter. Their salt leaking into the open wound that Dawn had left behind.
Later the crowd would tell authorities and newscasters that he looked like a saint. A fallen angel. A deity. Even as he swayed on his feet. Even as he faltered and fell into the sea of onlookers. Of hands that reached out to hold him up as wax and feathers dripped down to burn their fingertips. As the wings that could no longer keep him in flight disintegrated and vomit filled his mouth. Choking him until he drowned in it. Until his eyes closed and his body went still.
He’d joined Dawn in death before he had gotten even close to who she had been in life. There were those in the crowd who would call him foolish. It was just as easy to insult the dead as it was the living, to some. It was to his father. His father, whose own exaggerated pride would keep him from calling Icarus by his true name even as he lay inside his casket.
His father’s words were not the last he heard before Icarus earned a new set of wings in death. Dawn’s were. It was Dawn’s face he saw. Dawn’s smile that blinded him. Her voice that whispered to him the way it had each time she got ready to take the runway. “You lose one, you lose everything. And I don’t lose.”
Icarus had lost one. He’d lost everything.
Jasmine Griffin (she/her/they/them) is a black queer writer based in Cincinnati, and a teaching artist with Women Writing for (a) Change, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, Clarion West, and Hugo House. Jasmine has previously held the roles with Lighthouse Writers Workshop, the Mercantile Library of Cincinnati, and Carve Magazine. Jasmine was recently published in Writer’s Digest, midnight & indigo, Coffin Bell, Vast Chasm Magazine, Eunoia Review, Random Sample Review, Cincinnati Refined, Genre: Urban Arts, and Cleaning up Glitter. She received her MA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University and has participated in several fellowship and mentorship programs including, Voodoonauts, AWP’s Writer to Writer Mentorship program, and Pitch Wars. Jasmine released a debut poetry chapbook, Strange Religion, in July of 2024. Jasmine is currently at work on her first novel, Blackbird at the Crossroads, which is set in New Orleans and steeped in Southern lore.
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