Icarus of the Moon
The Old City Market, Warsaw, at Night, 1892 - Jósef Pankiewicz
There was a thief in the night, and he had no direction to pursue. He wandered aimlessly along cobblestone streets, tripping over an invisible ledge every few blocks, and his hands itched with kleptomania.
He stole hearts right out of the fluttering chests of those in love, snacked on them while he tried to feel a noise inside his own ribcage and couldn't. He thought he felt a heartbeat until he finished chewing, then the silence echoed so loudly his hands shook.
He salivated over the idea of achieving something grand. There was a thirst drying up the lines of his throat as he tripped and nearly sprawled out over the ground, before catching himself. People clung to his sleeves, calling, begging, "Come back, come back," and he left in disgust.
"How unbecoming," he sighed, and he continued searching for something to drink.
The city melted into the horizon behind him, and he walked in zigzags on train tracks. He followed them as they dove into lakes, even as the water came up to his neck, and he followed them when they split into two, even though he knew he would be split as well.
He followed them through hellfire and chased trains that could not be caught. The pursuit kept him occupied. Entertained. He continued gnawing on hearts as he went, and left people dead in pools of their own blood and tears.
"Someone needs to break your heart for you to learn," someone said, once, and he followed the train tracks to a bar and tried to pretend the alcohol kicking up his blood was a heartbeat that could be affected by such whimsy. He shrugged, felt an ache he couldn't quite explain, and moved to the next city in order to feel something.
His next journey, and his death, were both accidents. His neck hurt from his fixation on the tracks in the ground, and he threw his head back. His eyes landed on the moon. It scattered a light into his life he had never seen, and if he was still alive, he would say that he fell in love for the first time. Whether he was telling the truth or not would be impossible to determine.
The empty hole in his chest screamed at him to
take a slice of the moon and run with it!
and he shook with a hungry that began to taint his very bone.
He climbed towers and trees to touch her moonlight, and he abandoned the tracks that had only started to love him in what they thought was reciprocity, but never was. He had no care for what could not serve him.
There was a ladder that stretched high, and he climbed it frantically, even as the skin on his palms gave way to callouses and scabs. He thought the moon winked at him a couple of times.
(He had forgotten the passage of time, how the moon would wax and wane. He thought the moon loved him, too.)
Whether someone walked underneath the ladder or not, he was doomed from the beginning. He leapt off the ladder with his arms outstretched, trusting the moon to catch him, but the moon didn't see him, nor care for him. How could she, when the sun loved her so? How could he ever hope to compare to the sun?
His body collapsed on the mortal plane he thought he could escape. His body smashed into the waves below, and the moon sighed, turned the tide over his corpse.