I have stood in the rain without you,
and I have stood in the rain thinking of you.
I watched you lift your face to a gray sky
the way others lift their faces to God,
your black eyes wide and receiving,
your hair a dark wave breaking slowly
over your shoulders.
I did not understand it then.
I think I was jealous of the clouds.

I could not give you the green that follows the storm,
could not split the sky open and pour myself through it,
could not arrive on your skin the way water does.
I loved you the only way a body can,
hugely, badly,
with my whole unweathered self,
my hands that could not become rain,
my voice that could not become thunder.

I confess I still go outside when it starts.
I confess I let it soak through to the shirt, to the chest.
I confess I am looking for something you left in it,
some small instruction,
some translation of your joy,
because you were joyful in it,
and I am only wet.

The clouds are moving fast today
anxious, as they always are,
rushing toward some other country,
some other woman lifting her face,
her black eyes open,
her wavy hair already darkening with rain.
She knows,
the way you somehow always seemed to know
that all of this falling
is not sorrow.
That the rain is not weeping.
That the sky is just
practicing
how to let go of something
it loved.