barefoot in the rain

it's too cold to speak into payphones without trembling. it's one of those nights when the whole world seems to be the colour of smoke. I am screaming even though I know nobody will hear me. I press my face against the window glass and it's cold enough to feel exposed, but not cold enough to want to stop.

it's like the r-rated movie I watched when I was ten years old. I wanted to scream but my own swollen fingers were covering my mouth. now I am pushing two fingers into my mouth like the one time I pressed my palm into the shower drain. I wanted to be sucked in. I wanted to fall out. I wanted to be in a place where it was raining all the time.

time may have made me bonier, but I'm still sitting here with my fingers against the window of the telephone booth, and there's a boy standing out in the rain, but he looks happy. it's been so cold for so long that I now almost enjoy it because I like knowing that I could leave but that I never actually do.

he's the ghost I never should have even seen in the first place, but I saw him once and now his sad face is pasted onto everything. I see him when I push my head under the waves. even on the streets, I see his face. even when it rains. especially when it rains.

I can't stop shaking because I'm so cold and it's impossible to forget the memories of us writing down our pasts on the leaves because we were too afraid to speak. that was the same year I started bruising more easily and autumn seemed twice as long. that was the same year music couldn’t fix anything and I got my first kiss and my only friend first dropped his little sister off at a birthday party and he said he was going to take me out to see the trees, but instead he stopped at a hospital because he could no longer handle watching me live my life the way I did. the nurses grabbed me as I kicked and screamed, and even though it was from a distance, I could still see him crying.

I still can't stop shaking and now it's even worse. I put my head on my knees and I close my eyes and I pray to God that I'll wake up on his cold floor in his cold house and that he won't offer me blankets but that he'll pour his cold skin onto mine. I'm shaking and I'm staring at the end of the road and I'm crying because what if there's nothing on the other side and I'll vanish if I try to cross it? I'm shaking and I'm crying and I'm crying and I'm crying because he's crying and I don't know how to make him stop.