the meaning of ouroburo

It’s Friday night on 34 Street. The air is cool, the streets are wet, the lights sparkle and twinkle in the dark. It’s been a long day, or rather a long week. Too much is never enough is the name of someone’s monograph, I think.

It’s been like this. It might be this month. Clock struck 2013 and I woke tha fukk up. Not that I know what time it is. I only know all that has been has brought me forth and forth is where I begin, anew. Once more. Round we go.

Miss Jong taught me the meaning of the word ouroburo.

I step forth, into the cold slushy night with Miss Stermer by my side. Fam. I laugh, Could we have ever known. Twenty years ago. And yet we are exactly where we belong.

She sets me straight by telling it like it is. And finally I can hear. She liberates me from the belief that in order to succeed I have to play by the rules.

And so it is to her that I turn as I try to make sense of this. This thisness. Words, I mean, and what to do with them. How to commit to them. To me. To the Book. To the long form version that haunts my soul like a child never born.

I did it once. I did. I did. I can do it again. Again. I can begin anew. Only—

—fuck me and my first world problems. This is ridiculous but that is not surprise. Melodrama holds to the stage and the page but not the sidewalks of Thirty Fourth. Here it just looks like drunken girl talk.

Still I hear myself through the shearling, through the icicles that hang from pediments overhead. I hear me. The death of illusion is passions never spent.

I don’t know if I want to do it. Or if I should. I once believed that if I did, he would be mine. But now I know he never was. Or will be. He just gonna be. And he lets me be. And I love him. All that is left are the words unspoken.

Should I want it. Or should I let go. Am I willing to take the chance. Can I bear what it means to give myself like this. Because I know this is what he meant. Even if he never knew. This is all there can be between us. Does it matter anymore.