kid-cosmic1

[kid-cosmic1]

I’ll leave you words

It wasn’t supposed to rain. It never rains in the summers here. But it rained, and you were there. We’ve had fun this summer. Haven’t we? You were so unexpected, but I don’t think I could have accepted my love for you if it had been any other way. If you hadn’t hurtled into my life in a whirlwind of gentle caresses and a startling determination to make me yours. I knew we shouldn’t have. Secret touches in the back of the movie theatre. Your legs tangled in mine as the rain fell outside your window. I knew we shouldn’t have, but how could we not? You are the God they promised me. Wasted Sundays in an empty church. It was finally my turn to worship. Do you remember the lake? We went even though it was raining, the only place where we would be guaranteed privacy. I taught you how to skip stones. You didn’t know, still don’t really, being the city girl that you are. We stumbled back to yours dripping wet, your hand pulling me along. Your dad was out and so we did the only thing two lovers truly know. We fell asleep in each other’s arms. If only we had heard the car pull up, footsteps on the stairs heavy with intoxication. If only we hadn’t fallen asleep. At the beginning of summer, before the rain started, before you arrived in town, my mum had been told a story by a friend who had heard it from a neighbour. A story about a stolen kiss, the kind that two young girls should not steal from one another. I didn’t mean to steal that kiss. Drunk at an end-of-year party, music thumping, the world spinning around me, it was easy to forget that some stories are best left untold. I wish I could tell you how much you saved me when a week later you came out of the rain asking for directions to the nearest shop. New in town and alone you didn’t know, didn’t know that I walked the streets a pariah. I told you and you didn’t care. We talked for hours that day. You were terrified of starting a

new school, glad that you had a friend now. You walked me home, past the church, under the safety of your umbrella, and made me promise to see you the next day. I wish I could tell you now just how much you saved me. I’m so tired now, but I’m not in pain anymore. I can’t feel much of anything anymore. I didn’t think he would shoot, but he was drunk and you were so scared. You’re scared now, scared I’ll die. I’m sorry, I know how much you hate cliche tragedy, barely made it through Romeo and Juliet when I made us watch it. Yet here we are, your lover bleeding out in your arms. It’s not raining today. Look, out the window, I can see the sun. We’ve always known, haven’t we? That we weren’t made to last, that even in another time we won’t be remembered. You like those poems, don’t you? I never understood why. That kind of hope is unrealistic. But you like them so I read them. Our love will die with us as so many before us and as it will with so many to come. But that’s okay, isn’t it? We will remember. Your arms are warm around me. Will you hold me till the end? I don’t want to be alone. Never again. It’s not raining anymore, but I’ll dream of the rain, here in your arms. The way it might wash away my sins, just how endless Sundays promised but could not. I know if my eyes are to close now that they will not open again. Your face will be the last thing that I see in this form before I am claimed by Death. I think that I am okay with that. I will close my eyes dreaming of the rain. Free in a way that we could never truly be. Maybe it’s for the best that we are not free, slaves to our faith and the expectations of others, for nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

I never told you that that was when I knew I loved you, our day at the lake, in the rain. I knew then that you would have my heart for as long as it may beat and when my heart lies still, it will remember my love for you. I never told you that, did I? I wish I could now. I will think of the rain when I go. Of the rain softening the ground so that the earth will accept me back into its warm embrace. Maybe it will grow tired of my company and release me back to you. A mockery of the God that could never love us. It’s raining now. I can feel it on my cheek. Or are those your tears? Don’t cry, my love. It’s nearly over now.