Iris' painter hears the rain music return (off broadway)

clutching pen and pad in the soaking thundershower
Mick taps the tinted limo glass

she's across the street now
sorry she wanted this autograph

while behind black glass the star says “Go”
and Mick spins fender-swiped loses his balance

crashes catching his knee his arm
then his face splashes asphalt

she runs across the semi-darkness
arms rising to her face in shock until she cradles

his head his face in blue-white light
lips swelling gritty eyes unfocused

he lurches up she takes his weight
becomes his crutch

they stagger as one on three legs
his right shoe fills with dark red

he'd meant to show her what
he'd still do for her traffic splatters by

despite her stupid marriage
her bittersweet life even her kids

“I'm sorry,” she says
a red light casts its crimson tint

he wants to say he's okay
his lips don't work

her umbrella's gone dropped
or washed away? she looks down

sees his pant leg darkening
blood sloshing out his shoe

she leans him against a drugstore's
corrugated steel face

her eyes full of awe
he mangles the question,

“Broken glass?”
                        “You didn't have to—”

freed by the cold pain
in his lips his knee

his eyes gaze into hers
and hers hold him mesmerized

by what he means
and her voice can't open

her mouth trembles
and he knows

white rain through streetlight roars
a perfect excuse

to finally put her lips by his ear
“I'm sorry—”

he hears what she's never said
he tries so hard to hear

that a silence blooms between
her face and his

even the gutters go quietly
“I never told you...

I would—”
                        He wakes up utterly

despite his draining blood
his lips shiver but ask

“Would you, still?”
it's unbearable to think

what she might say or not
equally unbearable to not hear

then she can't hold it back
sinks her face in his neck

lips tremulous sobs opening her mouth
arms hugging too hard

and it is hopeless and he knows it
her breathing desperate

but it is a pure despair
that answers, “Always... always.

If only
          we could be—”

and her breaking goes straight through him
       a wave he can't stop drowning in

they have one soul
but they're submerged

until he hears the rain music
                                                return

First published in XConnect Vol. 6, Issue 21, 2004 at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/xconnect. Free audio of this poem may be found here.