The lover of rain — a poem

The rain bites
Even when it’s warm.
Tepid, uncomfortable pinpricks.
Memorials
Of diamond water.
It makes music
Against my window,
Cooling the furnace
Which is my forehead,
Pressed against it.

It’s burned since
We ended.
Happiness,
And life upended.
Home, now a prison,
I run my hands
Across flat pack stability,
Dragging it to new spaces
To ease the memory.

No sleep for the wicked.
Just replaying
Stanzas. Songs. Soliloquies.
Playacting resolutions,
Or dreamed less undignified exits.

And the space needed
Transforms from
The ethereal
To the electrical.

As my mind becomes
Soul becomes
Heart becomes
Black plastic.

Connected, WiFi
Router stuck inside
The lead-lined box
Of ‘no connection’.

Healing needed.
Reboot and rescan.
See if our signals
Jumble again.

In a month?
A year?
Half care — half not.

With abandoned abandon
The stage now set for
Inglorious inaction.

The players,
White spotlight,
Stay still for
The rippling applause.

The books we’ve read
Telling us ‘this is the best way.’

That our hearts -
No longer trustworthy,
Lead us astray.

Masked man,
Who will look at me
When I finally look away.

A wasteful,
Unforgivable display.

Of two adults,
More similar than they’d say,
Breaking their bond
For the sake of the other.

Time to grow.
Apart.
With dogmatic,
Irreverent,
Docile
Heart.