stones

He looks sideways at me and smiles.  He is blocking the sun. The light falls around him casting a hazy outline of his body.  

It reminds me of a crayon drawing with the lines so carefully blurred and bleeding. 

He tightens his jaw but the smile holds on.  He is waiting for an answer from me.  My answer will never come.   

This doesn't detour him. He steps out of the light and into the shade.  His hand on my arm guides me to follow.  He dips his head and all his dark hair falls forward. Deceivingly cutting 10 yrs off his true age. 

"Do you remember..." he pauses at the edge of the thought just as his voice cracks. I can feel his grip tightening on my arm. "Why the hell is it not raining?!" He blurts out in a forced laugh that dies slowly between us.  

I want to help him but I know better. 
  
I watch his chest rise and fall giving him time.  When I dare I raise my head to look him in the face. His smile has left and in its place is a ghost town.  

He lets go of my arm reassigning his hold to my neck.  He lets his fingers slide into my hair as his cups the side of my face in his hand.  Instinctively I lean in.  

"Did you ever love only me? Or have I always been a diluted version of him?"

This is the easy part. When we were together I was never able to tell him how I felt but walking the graveyard of us I can read him the words written in stone. 

"In a single moment, I loved you, and only you. That is something no other man will ever have from me... I will never be that stupid again."

"The saddest part about this is I know right when that moment was," he says letting his hand fall.  "It was raining."