SINCE YOU'VE BEEN AROUND

 

SINCE YOU'VE BEEN AROUND

You come as summer rain, soft, warm, deliberate—
each drop a slow caress along the nape, the wrist,
the hollow of the throat. I stand here like a foolish boy,
head thrown back, mouth wide, tongue curled to trap
the silver scatter you release. Too many. I swallow some
whole, salt-sweet; the rest slides down my jawline,
sluices between my collarbones, soaks the shirt
to transparency. Drenched, I’m thirstier than ever,
parched for the scent of wet pavement and ozone,
the low thunder of you arriving again. You hover inches from my fingertips. I’ve stretched
until the tendons sing, until the shoulder blades
flare like wings that will not lift. The rest is yours—
to close the gap or leave me here, arms aching
toward the possible yes that trembles in the air.
I will not miss this: the nearness, the taut skin,
the risk, the warm insistent wet that keeps on falling. You are the morning sky at first full light—
rose-gold, then molten white, then calm cerulean—
glowing steady while the city still sleeps.
I wake inside your colors. They burn
their quick reflection on the black of my wide eye.
The day tugs hard, but my glance keeps wheeling back,
dazzled, circling the steady fire of you. You say—or so you say—such brilliance fades.
Love is a wild fire, soon doused by the same rain
that kindled it. But this is not the same.
This sinks like groundwater into the bone,
cool, remembered long after the last light
has slipped behind the ridge and the hills go dark. You are the summer rain, and I the boy
who stands ridiculous beneath the downpour,
palms cupped, chasing drop on separate drop,
knowing I will never catch you all—
and laughing, soaked, impossibly glad of it.