Variation on a theme: Daphne and Apollo

You have betrayed me, Eros.

You have sent me

my true love.

- Louise Gluck, "The Reproach"

Waning, trembling, loss of breath: the first signs of the permanence that will become the end of this story.

Picture woodland, Dear Reader, imagine trees with whorled roots, and leaning branches; picture sunlight and comforting shade; picture the occasional brook, silver rivulets crossing brown earth and clusters of green grass; the sky must be a blinding blue, for it cannot be otherwise, the mind will always insist on blueness; let the breeze be a delicious balm--in the beginning, at least. Isn't this how most stories start, after all?

Or imagine the city, if you will, the city with its absent stillness. I prefer the woods, but do what you must.

STICK TO THE STORY. A reprimand. There should always be a reprimand.

The mind is where the chase leads; the mind is where the chase is, and I begin:

The shadows lengthen as the day loses ground. Two shadows, they were, and one of them was faceless.

MIND YOUR TENSES.

At the body's swiftest, the limbs persevere, and the mind endures.  Soon, twilight, herald of night. Soon, the wind; soon, the truth. YOU ARE GETTING AHEAD OF YOURSELF. But it is a race, is it not?

IT IS A CHASE.

I erase a word and replace it with the same word and think that I am discovering newness. It is a form of madness. I look out the window and see a small, round moon. I think it is more yellow than white, but then I change my mind.

One shadow fleeing from the faceless one, from the impermanent one, he whose being is always a makeshift one. I come up with a list of adjectives: transient, shifting, short-lived, they. They is not an adjective. Impermanent, then.

And that was why I ran. An epiphany.

WHO IS THE SPEAKER HERE? A reprimand.

The other shadow, breaking, then, turning into someone else, breaks again.

Daphne, dazzled by a slice of brilliance, finds herself turning--

That was not in the outline. That sentence pushed its way from below, from somewhere unseen. That sentence was an insistence I did not foresee. It begs to be italicized, but I would rather look the other way. It was I, after all, who was dazzled, it was I who turned; it was I who mistook that slice of brilliance for light. There is no outline.

WHO IS THE SPEAKER HERE? There should always be a reprimand.

It never ends. I cannot have you follow me this way.

WHO IS THE You HERE? But must there always be a reprimand?

I have (finally, finally) taken the great myth and torn it apart.

You are the tree that I want to become.

Summer

Daybreak. Pale rays of light cleave (your) consciousness into humid halves. Edges start to blur. A book of poetry, sprawled on your left thigh, disappears as your lids finally drop.

Slumber and desire are both fluid--

The ceiling, dock to your longing: this will be your first thought when you open your eyes again, hours later. Oh, merciless heat. When and where, deliverance? A dull ache lingers as a montage of tarnished dreams dissipates from your mind, but

--so let me flow--

not yet. Meanwhile, your mind roams in unbearable brightness, through tepid skin and agitated hands, above rising, and rising heights, underneath the glow of distant moonlight and alongside a frugal, sultry breeze, through restlessness and crawling mist. A dark, nameless hunger, an absent stasis. The eyes seek dim corners, entanglements. Blue lights flit about.

A specter of you, faceless, all brilliance--

On surfaces, sweat breaks, and breaks, and breaks into tiny, oppressive beads and

you dream of skies unfastening,

of you, opening

of rain falling on parched ground, of you catching the drops finally, finally, with your

tongue.

Debris

Slanted stems of sunlight bathe the room in the aftermaths of a stowaway morning, and my eyes catch movement, elsewhere. Elsewheres are faraway places. A quick brush, an agitation of sorts, the noiseless rustle of absence. One more hand slices into the stillness and I realize it is the mirror, stirring: the mirror is the explanation, and my hand is in it. There doesn't always have to be a reason. I look, and my elbow materializes.

That is my wrist, and that is my hand. The sunlight lingers, waiting. My fingers are flipping through the pages of a slim volume; my fingers are looking for a memory. There is no face, and I move away, grateful. You will only find that which you really look for. The air hangs heavy with what comes next. And I'm sorry, but there are no more gaps I can put you in. 

Hand and book disappear, reappear, and I scoop them out of the mirror.

Somewhere, mute, small and distant, a misplaced hollowness. Here, the poem I was looking for.