Constructions

It started with the dawn: red hanging about white with little bits of blue peeking through the crimson ringlets. I stared into the sunrise, and it took me from my origins in deep water only to leave its impressions on me reaching for the distant sky in a moment already gone. For the rest of the day, I scoured the sky for crimson ringlets and round white puffs. I wrote poems on my memories and examined every cloud for remanents of the dawn; I found nothing. Even the tremble of a superficially similar sunset seemed inadequate. By the time I stopped looking for a red sunrise, I stood in a different moment, as clouds became drawn against the impending night, with only the last hint of artificial red. In the darkness, I blinded myself to the future and the truth: every step trusted the night and only the night. A cool drink of water, and an undying devotion to the directions of the night lead me back to the water's edge. Despite my better judgement, I followed the darkness down into the water; the night promised me its secrets, like a diary or confession in the muted words of a long-kept secret. The phantoms in the night swim better than my battered body; whether they escaped me or I escaped them is an issue for argument and rhetoric, but my hand is empty, my future is uncertain, and I don't know where to begin again. Nothing was real, from the dawn to dusk, to late evening, and the wicked hours of morning before dawn. My imagination seized my common sense, and now I'm back in the deep water, lovesick none the wiser.