Interpret the ending as you see fit.

Under the Rain
Zakuyoe

It’s not your umbrella I’m under anymore. It’s mine. Mine’s red, though, not the blue and white one you used to own. It feels different to the touch, the wood between my fingers much warmer than the cold, steel handle of yours. Yet it serves the same purpose, and I force myself to ignore the differences.

It’s not your arm comforting me anymore. It’s my own. Mine are cold and unwelcome though, not like the warm arms that used to hold me close to your body. It feels different than when you used to comfort me, when you used to whisper solemn nothings in my ear, insisting things will be okay. Yet it’s comfort nevertheless, and I try to hold onto myself tighter, wanting, needing that feeling I used to get from you.

It’s not you I bump into when I stagger sideways anymore. It’s the empty air around me. It’s much more apathetic, though, most unlike the caring person who would pick me up if I found myself incapable of keeping my posture. It feels dreadful, knowing that you won’t be there if I lose myself in the moment, if I find no strength left to keep strong. Yet even still I knowingly stagger, allowing myself to feel the sickening dirt as it roughs my cheeks.

It’s not you who picks me up from my fall. It’s me. It’s much more strenuous though, not the way doing it with you had been. It feels painful, having to pick myself from my fall, knowing that it once used to be so much better than this. Yet I overbear the accompanying pain and pick myself up, taking a proper grip once more as I stare into the tombstone in front of me.

Christopher Lewis. You.

It’s not your tears I wipe away now. It’s mine. They seem so much colder, so much sadder, much more than yours could ever be. It feels satisfying, knowing that you would’ve wiped away my tears if you were still here. Yet I know better, knowing you’re six feet further than where I want you to be, six feet too far from easing my pain.

It’s not your memories that I miss nowadays. It’s memories of you. Your memories belong with you, and even though I wish I could hold them forever, I respect this fact. It feels sickening though, knowing that the memories I have with you are the only ones I’ll ever have. Yet I still want to believe that the good times will keep coming, even if you’re gone, and I only wished that we’d keep making memories with each other until eternity.

As I look at your epitaph, I realize it’s not your tombstone I wish I were looking at it. It’s mine. It’s impossible, I know, yet I wish that I could lie next to you, to sleep eternally under the stars beside the one I love. It feels excruciating that lives go on—that my life goes on—while barely anyone even stops to think of the deaths that have happened around us. Yet I do, I do think of those deaths, and I long for the day we meet again.

The words of that epitaph sink slowly into me, and it’s no longer your passionate words that are tearing my heart apart. It’s the words on that tombstone. It’s a quote from a poet you used to like back when I was unaware you even read poetry. I feel regretful for not knowing your love for poems, never finding out until you told me so yourself. Yet even if you were shocked at the information you showed me your favorite poetry, even composing a poem of your own under the rain, a poem only for me….

Moments pass, but it’s not your presence that causes me to linger. It’s your absence. It’s absurd, I know, to stay alone, uncomforted, in the pouring rain; but it’s your absence, your lack of presence that keeps me here, wishing that empty feeling would escape my heart. It feels strange not having you next to me, not having someone to lean on like I could at my grandmother's funeral. Yet, as sappy as it sounds, something tells me that even if you aren’t next to me, you’re still with me, and the absence that causes me to hurt is only your presence, reminding me that you’re, in fact, still with me, yet not, at the same time.

I’m not sure how much longer I can stay here, looking at your tomb, swimming in a river of angst and grief. It’s not the river—your river, you used to say—that I’m swimming in anymore, the river we’d play around in after school in the summertime. It’s my river, my river of tears. It’s intoxicating yet addictive, and it’s a river I wish I could drown in. It feels good, knowing you can’t save me this time. Yet I know it’s not what you’d want me to do, even if I wish with all my heart that it were.

I gulp, exhale, and turn away, trembling on the spot.

But it’s not your kiss that takes my pain away.

It’s… it’s….

Nothing.

Nothing takes my pain away.

It’s a pain worth dying for. The only person I cared for, the only person I actually loved…. It feels satisfying to replace pain with pain, and though I badly want to die, though I badly want to join you… no one said we’d end up in the same place.

Yet I do it anyway.