Poetic rain,

I wrote a little about being in love today

About thin-fingered hands and the mechanical light and

How the world suddenly seems to have good in it.

I wrote about how it always feels like

It’s meant to be, even if it’s not—

How I found comfort in the idea of something that was just for me,

And I called it destiny.

And baskets of snow fell from the air that morning

As flowers bloomed and white rabbits skipped around

You can’t go back now, it’s too late to even try

These are empty words—hollow, like the way our hearts beat at night.

Your eyes on a cigarette paper,

The real thing dangling between your lips

Top button’s undone, extended hand,

Nice to meet you.

It’s all chaos from here, I’ve been warned,

Yet, here I am

Laughing over skin and blood

And coffee with you.

And oh, the sun—watch it sink down low, so shy

In the night, we pray

And catch dragonflies

Your hair, I watch it fall over your eyes

And for the first time, a softness

And every rainfall I’ve seen

Every time I watched the sun go down,

It all led up to this moment—

The hesitation on your face

Before you lean in for a kiss,

The warmth of your eyes—

(Chocolate? Coffee? Honey?)

The tremor in your voice

As you say something that’s meant to be funny

And darling, you should know

That I’d laugh, even if it wasn’t.

You scribble words on the clouds that night,

Steal me blue flowers from sad bouquets

As we walk

The rain, it’s going to come down on us,

Soak us to our very core,

Wouldn’t you like to be someplace warmer?

The only warmth I know is the fire in your eyes,

The curve of your lips on my shoulder

And the rumble of your chest

When you say you’ve never felt this way before

And the stars in the sky, they all go out.

And the poetic rain, how can I ever forget

Your arm on my lower back,

Your secret grin in a crowd,

The laughter in your eyes

As I say something silly

The library shelves, here I am

The ones you kissed me against.

And that was the first December it snowed

But we stayed warm

In our little flat

With the grimy floors and

The tiny stove in the kitchen

Boiled sweets in our refrigerator,

And a heater that’s been broken too long

To be fixed.

You told me stories, on those nights

Huddled against each other

About how the world is too small,

Love painful,

Cigarettes expensive.

And I treat you to cheap beer

On the rooftop, I’m afraid of falling

But the snow—it isn’t

It continues to fall, unafraid, upon us.

And then, here we are—

Your arm around my shoulder, lips pressed to my hair

I was told you were bad for me— trouble, chaos, a drug

But when your lips, they meet mine and linger,

As we argue over good poetry

It doesn’t seem half as bad, then, does it?

When the sun comes out again,

It somehow remains just as cold

Your foggy breath, your torn yellow gloves

Aren’t around as much anymore.

And you fall off the roof

On a cold, slippery day

A weak joke and weaker chuckle,

Something about breaking a leg, you say.

And the coffee table, the brown, small one

Is covered in sheets of paper, your words everywhere

I’m choking, screaming, gasping for air here

I need

The comfort of your lips,

The warmth of your old coat,

Your ashy fingers in my hair.

And there’s magnets on the refrigerator tonight—

Rome, Paris, Berlin, everywhere else that you want to be

It’s autumn outside

(Never inside our little, lovely flat—

With its grimy floors and dim yellow lights.)

And darling, we’ve run out of groceries again

Will you come with me,

Let go of that pen for a minute?

You want to paint the walls,

A rosy pink would be fine,

And we scream together, to music so loud

The neighbours complain

You lift me up in the air,

And I kick and shriek, laughter

It’s almost—well, almost—like before,

The before when you loved the boiled sweets in the refrigerator

And cheap beer on rooftops as the snow falls

The before when you read me your poetry out loud

And told me stories

About a world too small,

And a head too big

To hold all your dreams.

I treat myself

To expensive wine on the rooftop that night

And the stars—they’re all back, finally

I almost want to fall

And break every bit of me that’s not already broken.

Your answers, they’re monosyllabic

Eyes too distant, too far away to see me

And darling, we’ve run out of groceries again

Darling, aren’t you home—

We’re out of groceries again.

Your little sheets of paper, little poems you used to read out loud

Don’t cover the coffee table in the sitting room anymore

And I almost said them today, those three f****ng words,

Almost spit them in your face,

But then I kissed you instead.

And the magnets on the refrigerator,

They go next

I’m too scared to inhale, exhale

To see what comes after.

And sure enough, it’s you

The boiled sweets and tiny stove—they stay

I don’t even remember the last time I kissed you,

And I don’t see you as you walk away.

And our little flat—

My little flat—

With its grimy floor and dim yellow lights—

It doesn’t smell like cigarettes anymore,

And I’d mail you your things

(Your old coat, ashtray and boiled sweets)

If only I knew where to.

And I ran into you, in the supermarket the other day

You were scribbling on the clouds,

Treating yourself to cheap beer

The scent of cigarettes, held loosely between your pink lips

A new coat, the snow’s still falling in baskets

Warm eyes but just for me.

And I saw you cry for the first time in my life,

I don’t think I ever wanted to, but here we are

Your lips on mine,

I want to remember it this time

I want to remember your cold, stale breath

As you whisper goodbye.

And there’s magnetic alphabets

On the refrigerator when I go home,

And I stand there, in your old coat

And spell out

I love you.