soaked raze the night we met outside of the place you worked until you were fired for stealing cash from the till, we walked through rain violent enough to drown animals more agile than the lumbering beasts we were. i made a two-tiered umbrella with my forearms, straining to see through the thin slit separating two skin-covered sticks. at the end of it all, my clothes and hair were soaked. my face was dry. i don't think i can call back one word we said to each other. but i remember what that halfhearted flood did to us. i remember shooting pool at the place you might have found the man you would one day kill to cleanse yourself of all he'd done to you and made you do. i remember drinking coffee with a friend of yours i wouldn't see or speak to again. and i remember the way you smiled, wet with tears that weren't your own but might as well have been. 230105 what's it to you? who go blather from