Rain arrives before it becomes weather.
It always has the manners of touch before it admits it is only nature.
The first drop on my skin does not feel like water.
It feels like permission I should not still be waiting for.
The second already knows my history.
And by the time it settles into my shirt, it is no longer rain at all
it is memory choosing temperature.
It touched me the way you once did, without warning, without asking.
One made the body wake up.
The other refused to leave it alone.
There are evenings when the rain is not above me.
It comes from within
from places I thought had already closed,
from wounds that learned how to imitate the sky.
It is strange, this equality of rain.
It falls on everyone the same way,
but it does not reach everyone the same place.
Some of us return home dry.
Some of us return carrying an absence soaked into the skin.
I stood in it because there was no other form of contact left
that did not require explanation
There are griefs that do not knock.
Mine learned the shape of weather.
It arrived again as rain,
as if asking whether I had finally become ready to feel it without you.
