that follows you

To some, thunder splash is frightening. For others it is a sign.

However, to me, it is musical.

The sun is out now, and tiny teardrops of rain touch the windowpane with this almost, I don't know — sadness? I'm only thinking of her now because I always think of her in the rain. Just as beautiful wet as any human being dry,she asked me once, "Do you love me?" She cried. Smeared makeup touched her cheeks with all the delicacy of a thousand knives — knives scratching paint. "Do you love me?" She blinked a few times, ignorant to the fact that I'd seen her pain before; not just here and not just now but that I had always seen it.

"I love you," I answered plainly, and she just said, "How?"

Her body shook. Her lips trembled, and her eyes pled. I touched her cheek gently, wiping makeup onto my fingers, the oils and greases from a sadness she could not comprehend my understanding of . . .

She asked me, "How?" She was in pieces, this I knew.

And yet, somehow, it was all I could do, everything in me not to smile. "Even broken apart," I said, whispering to her skin like tears vanishing beneath breath, "beaten and shattered, you are the most beautiful person I have ever known." I reached slowly for her hands and found her fingers, clinging to them like taking her her pain away one current at a time, absorbing every violent ray for her just so that she didn't have to feel it first. "Because every part of you, even the bent and broken parts, "I said, pausing briefly, catching a small of her breath inside my own, "they belong to me, too. Don't you forget that, do you understand me? Don't you ever forget that." And finally I relented, breaking into a soft smile. "Because that's what happens when you love somebody for real." I paused, thinking that a moment, letting my heart beat a little — letting it breathe a little. " . . . it's frightening, I know, like you're giving up your most secret and quiet self to somebody; like loving them with every fiber of your being, vowing not just to love them forever and hold them always but also to protect them entirely. " . . . even if that means loving your past, your pain — not because it happened to you but because it's in your past and it belongs to you, and that kind of hurt has an obligation, too, an obligation to who you are. And that is something I would more than cope with but I would appreciate to no end. That pain," I declared proudly, holding her hands, grazing her fingers, "belongs to you. It belongs to us both, so don't you dare try and take that away from me! Don't you dare!" Really, though, the horrifying truth is not loving someone with everything inside of you but it is instead the power that you are giving that person in the offering of so much of yourself, like they have this massive piece of you or something and always will and at any given moment they could stumble with it and fall and just shatter you into zillion little pieces, pieces which can only disperse and evaporate away because even that, in the the dispersing and evaporating away of those many tiny pieces — no, especially that — feels so much better than collecting those pieces back together, regrouping them like all the wrong pieces to the right puzzle.

And that, I guess, is what it means to love somebody for real. It's everything.

And at the same time, and as scary as all of that is, it's also okay. Because you have that much of that person, too.

That much. And more. And that is something special two people share. It's personal. Sacred. It's strong, and — what's that old saying?

Oh, yeah. It's definitely something worth writing home about. And the whole time she just stood there watching me the way that she always has, perhaps the only way she knows how, as if for the first time like seeing me as something completely new or something; or like love can never exist until finally and here and now alas it does — is, and forever will — between us fathomless and forever and always.

And that is something she refers to as a fairytale.

Which became my vow to her. "I don't promise to give you the perfect life," I said, half-smiling, "but I do promise to give you your own fairytale, something imperfect and light and heavy and dark and deep and complicated and adventurous and so impossibly ours." I took a breath, adding quite simply, "As in it belongs to us."

And so it has. Did. Does.

"So, please," I cried now, " . . . let me help you!" I clenched my hands into fists around her hands balled into quivering fists, not squeezing but just holding, as if to relate to her in no uncertain terms that here I was and here I am and here I will forever be, keeping my promise close like my next breath.

Because before any of this, before now, before crumbling without a sound, I'd spoken. "Where is she?" I was at home. "Does she exist?" I was in a league, trapped inside a pool hall. "Love is real, I know it is. But does that make it mine?" I was in my bed, in my head. "Does it belong to me?" I lay awake on my side, "Is love something I can hold or cling to or do I just wait for it to happen first? Can I make it real?" And I'd cry sometimes, and when the hours got late I'd roll over, " . . . where is she?" My heart would sink to my stomach to my feet. Inside I was crumbling without sound, but on the out I had given up.

And then it happened.

In a single moment and the way that all things do, the way that important decisions are made each and every day and sleep finally comes and sunsets finally rest after being goodnight-kissed by a single solemn starlight sky arriving and the way that rivers never rest and stories never end, it happened.

It was raining heavy and hard. I walked through a puddle, tripping into another. I glanced down, watching ripples create and then vanish between my palms, the wet dirt beneath scraping my skin. I took a solemn breath, keeping it in my lungs. I looked around and peered down again.

A footprint, carved in the dirt.

I waited for the mud to clear. I watched more ripples being created and then my clothes absorbed more rain and the squishing inside of my shoes, I opened my eyes again and looked up, swallowing air.

Water on the smooth, pale surface of her skin, smearing makeup, creating lines down the side of her face, streaks of black crossing over to her eyes and cheek, she was looking at me.

She was looking right at me.

Soon the rain calmed and the ripples began to settle around my fingers.

I looked away, peering down mostly. I smiled and stumbled to my feet. Then, as if following suit and looking again at the petite footprint carved in the wet dirt, I took a step.

Because at the end of the day a sign can be something as simple as that, a small shoeprint not yet washed away beneath the overcast skies of yet another rainy day.