Here Comes the Rain

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Did I ever love you? Did I ever need you?

Did I ever abuse you? Did I ever cheat you?

Did you ever want me? Did you simply settle?

If it hadn't been raining, would you have wanted to leave me?


Did I ever lie to you? Or raise a hand to you? Think back over the years and search your memory— you, the one with the ironclad, photographic memory —search the archives and see if you can find a time when I wasn’t there for you. Did I give you the space you needed to be who you wanted to be, or did I constrict you by being who I already was when you met me? The scruffy, misaligned, searching soul you said was so different from all the others you’d been floating along with had a thousand reasons and a thousand occasions to banish you. The night I hinted I might, and you sobbed, begged me not to leave you. And then what did you do? Decided to “pull the trigger” (your words) yourself.


“Who knows?” you said. “Maybe I’m doing you a favor.” Yeah, maybe. You certainly didn’t need to do me such a favor. With friends like you . . .


But tonight you’re not the one I’m asking my questions of. I’m asking the one who came before you. You see, she saved my life. You saved nothing; you merely filled a void. A lucky thing for me at the time, I admit. Now, as I reflect, a mistake that had to be made. A collision that had to happen, else other celestial bodies would never have been formed. You know what I mean.


But the one who came before you— princess to my lowly, muddy serf —tonight I am asking you the questions I should have asked you then:


Did you ever love me? Weren’t you always there for me? 

Did I ever use you? Is it true I understood you?

Were you ever quite as serious as I made you out to be?

If it hadn’t been so sunny, would you ever have deceived me?


No one knows where Love goes when it’s gone, but when it’s gone it never comes home again. Maybe that’s where Love comes from in the first place; when that incapacitating feeling strikes without warning, when you’re fine one day and the next your inexplicably running into doors, gazing up at a cold white moon for no apparent reason; when you’re forgetting to eat, even when you’re hungry, and you’re listening to the same song over and over and over because it tortures you in a melting, overwhelming, and ecstatically happy way and all you can think of is that Other . . . maybe that drifting continent of Love you never saw coming, that colossus of emotion that’s bumped into you and knocked you flat, was someone else’s Love gone lost. Someone else’s missing, wayward Love, running away from its former owner and looking back over its shoulder, not watching where it was going, ran into you by accident, not by design.


All at once, you were in Love. 


The sun was bright and the sky was blue;

the stars shone bright in heaven just for you.


Your heart skipped beats and your dreams were all in vivid color. You were walking in fields of miracles with music everywhere around you; you were crying tears of happiness in the moment and counting on a lifetime. Though someone else, you knew, was sad that night because it was his or her Love that ran down the the lonely road and found its way to you, you asked no questions. You reached out and brought your Love in closer, praying you wouldn't lose It. But you knew you would; it was only a matter of time.


Now, another new day has come and another Love has gone. Here comes the rain.






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