The rain makes stringed instruments of our hair, beads
on kitchen curtains, love knots
for our children to climb, losing themselves
in our tangles
 
Our search for their missing smiles is the meaning
we assign to water, to blue.
the reason we consider the sky broken
peel the horizon bloody from streetlights
paint the curbs with our feet, find harmony
with the rain by matching our hips
to bare roots, slip loose from dirt
move
 
past trees smoky and bored
as the musician outside a club
where the old men dance only to classics
 
Like love, gone missing for cigarettes
an angel divorcing her children, a man in a city
Where other men name their adultery
Foreplay, blame bored wives sitting in windows
making a strong tea of patience, heart
a small fly drowned wingless and broken
 
We blame the rain for the weight of the sky
as easily as we blame each other’s bodies
for silence, as dull toothed and pointless
As blaming you for owning a soul too old
to remember naming the sky
 
hydrant, the stars streetlights, gathering
their numbers near the water, running
up and down basketball courts in our sandals
move
 
past memories of childhood spent ignoring
the bones we carried in our mouths, calling these teeth
to the fire alarms I pulled in your lungs,
near misses, catches, you breathless and hungry for
danger on fire escapes, pressed against windows
tattoos made on your tongue by my teeth, ice
rubbed across your chest until it rained
down your legs
 
We dirtied the carpets with love, the sky
bucked and pressed its heaving chest against
the glass, and we swore with our sweat
to wear each other’s fingerprints as promises, you
don’t remember this
 
but you remember the rain
by its initials, carved in the dirt outside
our yard, count pearls of water spilled down
our daughter’s throat, a broken necklace
the sun borrows to stain glass her reflection, number
the freckles on son’s shoulders, divide by four
because math makes more sense than love
move
 
like October leaves chasing the wind.
When you left, the only meaning I could give
to your absence, sometimes
the wind hears a bell ring and chases
curious after, eager to swallow the sound so she can
impress the trees with a song she’s just learned, like a child
it is not her nature to stand still
move
 
through rain, seeking whatever fever
of jazz, gin or fear it is you’ve come so close
to the earth to learn, lean close to the windows,
listen. When a child tries to find his absent mother
in his father’s arms, thinking she is waiting somewhere
inside him, like a prize they will win if they pray
or bite hard enough, all a man can do
 
is hold them to his chest, threaten the thunder
to stop scaring his children, whisper, tell them
how she smelled like water, how her breath
was the window rain looked through, jealous
how she taught him the classics
 
like love, like absence, like children
waiting for their father to stop watching the rain
carry their home down a hill
Waiting for him to move