Ouroboros

by Benjamin Renne

               The day I met you

               the sun

               was covered

               up with rain

               so thick

               it seeped in

               through the hole

               the ants had

               tunneled

               by the window.

Something malleable and sticky began to grow like webwork from my fingers to yours. Later, I would recall this memory in a vision of your body, burnt orange, towering above me. Stretched to the ceiling, your face was shrouded in rainbow overture as it shaped and re-shaped the gathering air.

               When you moved

               the clouds moved,

               our bodies filled

               with the sun

               building

               in crescendo

               behind them.

You looked like one of Rilke’s angels, cacophonous in the storm above. With one hand you spread Lament like a brushstroke across an oil-painted horizon And with every inhalation the air heaved until it became only a thin shimmer of color between us.

               And still

               the light

               clung to you,

               or you clung

               to the light,

               or the light

               and you

               clung together

               and then dispersed

               as dust, which

               I breathed in

               and held

               until my lips

               stung purple.

Because it’s so easy to mistake the end for the beginning when light drips through you like a crack in the window, and the sun hits the column of your dreams just right, it’s too hard to see anything but the future in those moments. So even with the sun in our eyes, we hardly have to squint or wonder at what new visions may come.