It was 7 pm and Saturday

When I was fifteen

And you were younger

I walked an overcast mile

Just to taste the rain on my lips

Sinking each step

Into mushy grass

Into moistened concrete

(Ruining the construction

Well after it finished

When it was too late, too solid

And the footprints would not show)

Petchichor 

My fluorescent pink raincoat

Goes well with your flowers, I figured

I told you out loud

The things you could not hear

Searching for hope 

In the layered, grayscale sky

When the storm came

It did not thunder

But rained stones

Shaken from the heavens

By the dissonance within me

My disgust, my sin, my shame, and my defect

Made the shot

And you were the chaser

Words tasting like sour lime 

When they arrived, pre-recorded

Begging me not to purge the broken pieces

I swallowed a sharp laugh at the irony

And hated myself, a little, in that moment

Because I could no longer follow you 

To where you were, or to your acceptance

I could only curse the clearing sky

For selling all those rainbows

That could not gift you two more years

When I was fifteen

And you were younger

Why did they bury you

In that awful, frilly nightgown

And not the cotton t-shirt

With the Michigan lighthouses on it?