The sky’s got that bruised-plum look again,
and the air smells like wet concrete and memory.
Most folks are tucked away, watching Netflix,
complaining about the damn drizzle.
Not us.
We’re out in it.
The city’s a watercolor painting someone left on the sidewalk,
neon bleeding into the asphalt,
headlights smearing past like half-forgotten dreams.
You pull the collar of your old coat tighter.
I watch a single drop catch on your eyelash,
hold a whole upside-down world in it for a second
before it falls.
Remember when we’d run from this?
Scramble for an awning, laughing, shaking our hair out
like a couple of wet dogs.
Now we just… walk.
The rhythm of our steps is slower, sure,
a different kind of song.
Your hand finds mine, not with a frantic grab,
but with a soft landing. The skin is paper-thin now,
a roadmap of every door you’ve ever opened for me.
I look at you, and the rain blurs the edges,
softens the lines around your mouth.
God, I love the lines around your mouth.
They aren't wrinkles. They’re laugh-echoes.
The ghost of every dumb joke I ever told,
still hanging around.
Each drop that hits us, I swear,
is a tiny ghost of a minute we lived.
That one on your cheek? That’s the cheap wine in Tuscany, ‘92.
This one soaking through my sleeve?
That’s the fever our kid had, the long night in the rocking chair.
That stream running down your temple?
That’s just a quiet Tuesday. And another one. And another.
We’re not getting wet. We’re getting drenched
in our own history.
You lean your head on my shoulder.
It fits there. Still fits there.
Maybe love isn’t a bonfire anymore.
Maybe it’s not a firework.
Maybe it’s just this:
two old fools, walking slow in a downpour,
not trying to get anywhere fast.
Knowing the best shelter we’ll ever find
is right here.
This wet, messy, perfectly ordinary
this.
