Rain

When it rains I'm given back days thought dessicated by time's rapacious lips. I don't feel the gentle drops that surprise the shoulder, nor the cascade that soaks in seconds my entire body. The rapping of droplets on car hoods. The thought that you could dodge each drop by running fast. Gone. When it rains I'm five years old on a play structure in a small field surrounded by condominiums. The sandbox flooded, we jump from the monkey bars into a brief suburban sea, the sky's gift to youth on a pastel day. Only when it pours do from her lips come moments thought withered, spit from the clouds and caught running down my cheeks. No longer on the day after rain can I swim in a sandbox in a stretched white shirt, unconscious of the forming ellipsis imprinted by the suck of her lips.