rain

My eyes are like birdbaths.

They fill with water, and it escape down my cheeks. 

Stinging, aching, blinking the water away. 

But I don’t cry.

No not in the rain. 

Whilst in the rain, I am invisible. 

My skin shines like wet pavement,

disappearing into the grey world. 

The heat lingers from the past,

the once sunny day now overrun.

Taken over by the rain, 

as is myself.

The street is littered with puddles,

an identical world lost to time.

My socks are wet in my leather shoes,

but my conscience is dry. 

Funnily enough, I am not an old fool in the rain.

I am 5 again and covered in mud.

Head to toe in dirt,

crouching in the weeds,

staring. 

Staring at the other me,

the one in the water.

A single drop makes its journey down,

down my nose and lips and off my chin.

I follow it’s path through the air,

toward the puddle. 

And then

ripples.

Ripples, and I’m back.

Clean and cold and colourless.

I’m back in the street and my eyes are stinging and I do cry now. 

Because the reflection I see is old,

he is cold and he is grey like the sky. 

Why? 

Why can I not seem to break this eye contact,

his gaze is so loving, so gentle. 

I furrow my eyebrows at him, 

but he just stares back. 

He is swirling in the puddle, 

hair flat on his forehead,

skin the colour of chalk. 

I scrunch my nose and close my eyes and open my mouth and scream,

piercing him with my hateful thoughts. 

But he just stares back. 

How I wish to rip the scarf off his neck,

the skin off his skull. 

Tear my nails down his arms,

his back, his chest. 

He does not deserve my face.

The books I write about myself,

the journals I keep and the pictures I draw, 

I demolish them in a rage.

Tear them to pieces and fill the puddle with their corpses. 

But, lucky enough for this worthless,

broken spined, shrivel handed,

child. 

He is protected behind the puddle’s surface. 

For the papers dissolve in the soup of soil and anger. 

And there he stands again, unscathed.

A look of disappointment plastered across his face. 

He kisses my tear-stained cheek,

runs his hand through my hair. 

He wipes my face and bandages my spine. 

He passes me a new pair of woolly socks in a giftbox adorned with ribbon. 

As the sky clears and our world dries too,

the reflection is lost. It was merely temporary.