pluviophile (n.)

pluviophile (n.)

ii. the rain lades his eyesockets, a boy nameless to me, with decomposition. the mists are laced with rot and bathed earth; the flowers expend their bloom in vain. his hands lay at his sternum, and i can hear the life that evermore pulses beyond his body; a careening heartbeat, lost to a dim meadow.

i look upon him. he lay in a shallow grave of long field grasses, and dirts that tarnish his poor skin. rain lilies and swamp milkweed unfurl to the rain from the ground beneath him. his bone bares itself through blankets of flesh, and skin, and hair. his skin decays at the perimeter of his body, sewn with purple bruising, and gaping lesions.

where his hands lay, his skin is immortally preserved. his heart left untouched by time.

i. the sky whistled in airy blues and deep cloud shade as i stood under it, both of us weeping drops of citrine and golden sunlight. nebulous clouds parted across the celestial, and sunlight mixed like paint with the storm.

i breathed in the radiance as sun-dried grasses wrapped their tendrils around my scuffed ankles. i was dragged into the lands; i swallowed aventurine and vesuvianite, i was slathered in liquid gold. i flexed my hand where i lay and found myself not moving a hair’s width, encased in amber winds and larimar falling from the sky. my tears pooled at my back, and they brimmed over my fresh grave, filling the lands with my woe. the sky echoed my wails, and i was plunged within its seas of rainfall.

iii. his bones are delicate and ready to crumble as i do. i sink my knees into a swirling puddle, soiling my shoes. the torrent sent from heavens above beats down upon his fraying clothes. my lip trembles; gentle, i place my fingertips upon his. i need not ask him if he is here with words: his soul sings out. poor child, the sun would say to me. mourning for vacant bones.

i let my lip tremble and, without me, my fingers pluck my last twigs of juniper and flick my lighter aflame. the fire seizes the juniper amidst the frigid gale. i yearn to speak my goodbyes, but the sorrow is too true for words, so i fall silent to the water that cards through my hair. he would not be able to hear my cries if i set them free from my throat now; the rain is booming, and he is gone. it burns, and it burns. and i watch his flesh, frozen in dreams, thaw and melt downward into periwinkle reflections.

and i watch his life, aged by trepidation, soak into restful soils.until, all that remains of the boy is a bed of sodden fabrics and lilies with newfound breath.

the sun stretches its legs through the quilt of cloud, daytime streaking through the sky, flinging itself across the fields. the warmth drips into my worn fingertips. the land no longer drowns in his tears. the sun rises. it kisses my cheeks.

iv. my cheeks are burnt and my lips are bled. my shoulder blades crack beneath hefts of rainwater, and my eyes collapse into my skull under the weight of spilled sunglow. my rib cage opens to unfolding white petals; i can unveil his songs and verses in the pollen.

and if i were to tell our sun of what had happened there, it would leave its planets, and it’s galaxy, and it’s meteors to shine upon that meadow.