He asked me to write about rainbows.

Rainbows? I asked, more with my eyebrow than my mouth.

Rainbows. He replied, with his smiling eyes and his teasing smirk.

As if I could write about that.

He knows the basics; how the rays of sun blaze through this thing called time and space,

how it enters so fast into its prism;

crystalline matrix of earth bending quality.

How it splinters and moves out—

away—

drawn from and against

each individual particle.

A display of wonder,

beyond any motive to contain it.

 

There is your rainbow, my love.

There, among the light

cast into the dark,

when it is received fully, absorbed exactly as it is,

and applied to a quality

that bends it just so

from solidarity into fluidity

from flux to flow,

this quality molds and tears and pulls and dances with the light it consumes,

and then,

swift as lightening

it shines its splintered gaze out

into the spirit I see

behind your eyes.

 

But you didn’t really mean for me to write about rainbows, did you?

What you really wanted me to do,

was to write about us.

 

Love elephant and want to go steady?

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Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: Pixoto user George Lourake