all the rain that never falls

[deleted]

in which a scientist falls for a poet

she is always swirling her titrations
and narrating to me the meaning of existence
from her mess of a notebook--
it lays open to the same old page, the one about the atoms,
the reactions, the arrangements drawn in black and white.
she kisses me like i am made of lab glass. we are all atoms.
when i kiss you it is the purest of all reactions.
she leans her head back in relief. it has taken twenty years,
but i think my octet is finally complete.

i am always scribbling in one notebook after another,
my mind's chronology taking the lead over time's steady pace.
she lays beside me, staring up at the popcorn ceiling. i run a hand down her face
and say sylvia plath would be proud of how i love you. percy shelley would see you
akin to his own mary.
i know the amalgamation of our souls has no end and no beginning,
it shines in our pressed-together bodies and gives me life.

she whispers me the formulas of polyatomic compounds like a lullaby
and creeps her cold hands around my abdomen. sighs and breathes in my scent,
doesn't waft it, she knows i'm dangerous and takes my risk by the hand.
before i sleep she tells me that science is perfect, but i am more so.

it's february.
my mother's hair is short and my father's is long.
i tell myself it's raining because the heavens are trying to tell us something,
my love is half an hour away, she sings herself to sleep at night.
one day it is seventy degrees out and i find my will to live,
i wish on every north star that i'll stay this happy for a while.

and i hate this constant state of waiting,
waiting on love and waiting on hatred,
wanting some sense of home among the barren trees.
it's february.
i believe i am slowly going insane.

she drags me through the surf, and i have to follow.
how could i ever leave her to float through the ocean alone?
my starfish, my seafoam darling. she splashes like a little child.
and i gaze at the way she glows, bioluminescent.

i've always looked out onto the atlantic, you see. these waves
have seen me through loves and heartbreaks past, but she is a
newcomer, my ruiner. she tears me apart like seaweed.
i am left to wonder whether or not she realizes
she could make me drown.

she puts her head below water, and i lose my breath,
like i did when i was seven and drowning,
like i did when she kissed me on the boardwalk.
i brought this girl to the ocean, to my home,
because she keeps me insane--
i'm the dolphins ducking under the horizon, i think i have to lose her
in the salt water to love her once more.

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i resented death as a child. it was all around me and yet so far. my dad's best friend died and i didn't go to his funeral but i remember his son and i running around the backyard together. he flies a kite on the beach with me after it happened. someone asks him how he is. he stares up at the kite and says "i'm good. the wind is perfect for flying today." we learned not to talk about his dad, just like we learned not to talk without raising your hand. it wasn't proper.
my mother kneels on the steps of the temple in her hometown. i kick a pebble so far away i can't see it anymore and look up to her tears. i ask her why she's crying, and she tells me that sweet things aren't as sweet anymore without her dad. i run to get her touch-me-nots and watch her fade into grey while the walls are alight with color. i have never been one to comfort, just distract. i can never take away the pain from a person, but i can take the person away from the pain for a little while.
late at night my father gets a call and they say the thing you never want them to say--someone in your child's class died. it is sunny the next morning. i write angrily and go to school where everyone else has no strength to pretend they're fine. we fill his locker with roses, but i can't tell if they're for him or us. i wear dark blue, we all do, we drift through the hallways like some massive wave of melancholy. i pick apart my eraser during english class, all those pink pieces scattered like petals, like floating lanterns in a late-afternoon sky.
because sometimes you go home and the person you love isn't there anymore. the house shrinks, then it grows. counters are washed clean. hearts feel empty for a time. sometimes they stay that way. my mom still scrubs her hands at the sink like she is trying to rid herself of grief. but the wind is perfect for flying and sweet things can still be sweet--life grows, it grows.

someday i will sit on the front porch of an old cape cod
with a sunflower behind my ear and lips stained raspberry-red,
the rain will come down soft and slow while the sun still shines.
i will curl up in the lap of a woman i love, her hair is the color of honey--
i swirl her into my earl grey in the morning as a little girl laughs like
piano music in the next room. she will put flowers in my hair
and forget that i am terrible, forget i left a trail of bad decisions
on the backroads.
and everything will be okay.
and everything will be okay.
i need to keep believing in this.

please fly with me. it's exhilarating.
it's not the sky, it's getting there first. knowing you could go down,
could crash in a ditch, die before your time. the ascent breaks you, watching all
those cars turn to dust, feeling the wind in your lungs like you're in the eye
of the hurricane--but the cruise puts you back together. you settle like sand.
and there is no weather so high up. rain can't drip down the windows.
you will hear thunder--you will hear it. and you will know that it cannot hurt you.
and when you come rushing on down to the land, it'll feel like parts of you
are flying out the window and your heart feels like a bird.
a part of you will feel free.
fly with me, love--before the clouds fall out of the sky.

leave the dandelions in the lawn, please. everyone says
they're ugly but they said that about me too, and we all
know you don't agree with that. let them sprinkle their children
all throughout that endless grass, raise their family right here
in the heart of suburbia. just like we were. just like we will.

elle est laissé la pluie dans la couloir pour
deux or trois moments quand j’ai couru à l’interièur.
j’ai ri avant de la réalisation, la réalité que
nous sommes un bout d’étoile dans une
universe des personnes solitaires. un petit bateau
dans la mer méditerranénne, un île dans la océan pacifique.
cette moment es délicat, le souviens, si ça te plaît.

et je sais pas si ce jour va être la fin de cette affaire.
quand j’ai donné tous mes secrets à vous et vous donnez moi
des mensonges couvert en amour. ce mot que je te dis,
est-ce qu’il va être le dernier de ma vie? nous sommes
rien qu’un coup d’oeil dans la nuit, rien que aimer sans croire.
je pense que c’est le monde entier dans mes bras, et vous pensez
que ce n’est pas pour toujours. je sais pas comment vous
pouvez dire «je t’aime» à moi pendant c’est comme ça.

the speech i give you in my dreams

unfortunately, it is selfish
just how much i miss you.
so much so that i will never
say it out loud, for fear
everyone will realize i love you
because you make me less selfish.
do you see what your absence does to me?

in my dreams we are always just close enough;
we are not pressed up against each other like
nothing can compare to loving and we are not
miles away at the same table. you are in my arms.
the library keeps buzzing, gently. i can sigh.