I always marveled at the way you wore your skin. Like you were completely unaware of the innumerable fallacies of your youth or the edges of your contours that the rain continually frayed. You carried yourself in a paper bag, no plastic - nothing durable. There was an acceptance of your eventuality that rode through the street, two strides before you, clearing your path with the parity of royalty. There was a summer in your hair, that glowed with decadence, amassing the casual grace I came to associate with you. A blistering youth, a dizzying ascendancy to a mid-way, where nothing really mattered - beyond the acrid sweat and burning justifications of a river of innuendo, lined with dreams. I would hold your hand so tightly in mine, that you found it imperative to gently tug away from my necessity. How is it that you were always frozen in the pre-ordained lines of your perfection. I was never close enough to feel the uneven pulse in your throat, to smell the dereliction of passion on your cloudy breath - I was in your hands, in your grasp. Never in your smiles. I tried to be neatly folded, hoping you would one day gather me in your immense arms and draw me to your heaving chest. I would lie still, so still that I would forget to breathe - and watch as you pulled pearl after pearl out of your hair. I always wondered how you convinced them to leave. I lay blue, on the floor, and you would pass me with the flippant knowledge of the dying. Toss me a word, a phrase. Never an invitation. I have memorized every flick of your wrist as you pulled warmth from the coldest lie, the layers of your coat as they floated over the snow. I know every gravelly intonation of your voice, pregnant with smoke, the sleep in your bones, the silence in your shoes. I sit here now, watching the sky fall from an emptying heaven, and wonder whether the water is falling into my cup or somewhere far, far beyond me. I can sense you in the dilapidated world, sense your vagrancy in the moistness of the concrete, the buoyancy of the grass. I have looked for you in everything. I guess I will have to see if my coffee tastes like rain.