We, Icarus

My broker and I watched the markets drop,
ticker crawling across the bottom of the Bloomberg screen,
and salvaged what we could,
kept Microsoft, sold AXA, unwound
positions that were meant to hedge
pain, loss, grief, old age—everything
unsustainable as paper.
All year, we flew like Icarus,
capitalism collapsing, the horizon close,
our wax wings softly spread. We glided,
passing rainstorms and clouds of white roses,
petals scraping sky. Up, up we soared to that place of almost
everything, where the universe bent, light
cradled in on itself, and time stopped.
But heaven would not have us.
It tossed us down like coin.