My heart skips through puddles when it hears you
tapping that old rhythm at my window.

I want to throw it open, pull you through,
(picture you, a silver needle, trailing a whisper of blue)
so you can fill my simple room
with your rainy-day perfume.

And I would make a candle out of you,
if only it could dim the lights the way you lightly do,
if only it would lift my chin
like only you can do.

I’m drawn to the window (fluttering
curtain that I am) — lovedrunk on the puddles
and their manic aerial dance, my eyes
are caught like raindrops on the pane,
entirely mesmerized — these scattered beads
that swell and sink

and streak like melting snails
whose shells, wet lenses, magnify trees
to each droplet-laden leaf —
and the earth remembers to breathe.

And there’s life on the porous concrete
when the worms and the slugs come
flooding the streets. There is jubilation
on every scale. Mushrooms hoist their moistened caps;
humans bloom in clusters of umbrellas.

Fuck umbrellas.

I want you unprotected.
Take my simple skin-bound body,
this body you make beautiful
with brushstroke waterfalls.
Take it, take it all.

Come closer than a lover,
then come closer still.
I want all my tender skin to prune
from so much time with you.

Your voice, thin whisper or unbridled outpour,
this volatile ballad is all I can hear.
In its rogue bellows come crackling fractals
thrashing through this atmosphere. I’m ecstatic
here beneath you, in this electric rhapsody we share.

So fill me with the lightning I see lighting up the sky.
Surge my every nerve and leave me
gasping where I lie.