Rain

It's raining outside. I'm standing out in it. It reminds me of you. I imagine the clear, heavy drops caressing my face are your hands, while I pretend I'm not crying. The cool rain and my hot tears mix, until you can't tell where the tears end and the rain begins. Once, I couldn't tell where I ended and you began.
My eyeliner is running, but you're not here to wipe the dark streaks away. I miss you, you know. My hair is soaked through, the water turning it the deep red color you loved. I've grown it out; it reaches past the middle of my back now. It looks the way you always wanted it to. You've never seen it.
I'm just standing in the rain. I want it to wash away the weight on my chest that's making me slowly suffocate. I miss you.
There's no one home right now. I'm half expecting, or maybe just dreaming, that I'll turn around and you'll be leaning against the doorway with a towel in your hand, laughing at my obsession with the rain again. And I'll smile at you, slowly. The smile you said made me look like Eve with the apple. You'll roll your eyes, but inevitibly, you'll join me underneath the pouring, open sky where I now laugh because I've won yet again.
I open my eyes, black spiky lashes heavy with tiny drops, but you're nowhere to be seen. And I start to miss you all over again.
I want to run, somewhere, anywhere, but there's nowhere to go. So I just stay motionless, like a rain drenched statue. Maybe when you come back, I'll be covered in moss, sleeping in green, until you wake me up. But that's in the fairy tale. You're not coming back. Reminding myself of this is torture I somehow crave. A painful, sweet cycle beginning and ending with you. My thoughts always lead back to you somehow.
I still have the scars on my arm that you used to trace. Why were you fascinated by my imperfections? Perhaps the same reason I liked your slightly crooked nose, and the way one corner of your mouth tilted up higher than the other.
Maybe I should sit in the old maple, let the thick, twisted branches cradle me while I think back to when you held me, and I memorized your face with my fingertips. Your face is blurring in my memory now.
I bite down on my bottom lip, hard, and taste rainwater and salt, and then a little blood. What must I look like, standing in a downpour, while lightening criscrosses the bruised sky in random patterns, trying to hold onto old ghosts? The thoughts slip through my fingers along with the rain caught in my palms.
I think it's time for me to go in now. My lips are gaining a purple tinge. I need to let you go. I miss you.
I turn back towards my house. The windows seem to watch me.
I still can't say good bye.