It rained that day. And I wasn't surprised. Yes, this was a wedding it was also a funeral. After that day I would not be the same man I had been before. I would become a shell; a hollow thing with bloodshot eyes that no one would dare try to sympathize with.

Rachel was lovely. She was not the most beautiful girl in town, but she still turned heads when she walked down the streets. She turned mine.

It took me years to turn her head in my direction. I was not a handsome, wealthy fellow, and I appear even worse now. I was rather a humble, lowly man with little to offer a woman beyond poetry and love, for while I earned a steady income, it was not one that could be well shared between two people.

Yet one day, her eyes focused on me. I alone was allowed her rare smiles, her soft whispers, her endless dreams. It was a happy time.

I do not know what turned her heart against me. I simply awoke one day, the day that I was to propose to her. And I looked out my window, to find her walking with another man. A man that was far more handsome and wealthy than I could ever be.

Rachel never spoke to me after that. And when her wedding came about, six months later, I was not invited. I stood and watched through the windows of the church, as she took her vow, then stood beneath a tree as she and her husband were born away in a carriage. And I shivered in the rain.