I have become a country song

It’s amazing what loving someone like this does to you. How it shapes the person you were into something unfamiliar that’s also something better. How it changes the way the world comes in through your eyes. It’s Sunday night of a long weekend. The rain’s been falling for two straight days. The drops must have gotten bigger since dark. They’ve been silent all day, but I can hear them now. Flame-Haired Angel is away creating her dream, in England. It might as well be Australia for how far it seems at night. Rain like this she calls romantic. Sexy. If she were here, we would have let the movie I’ve been watching go silent and followed the roof rhythm of the rain. As it is, I find, in the half-light of the TV, a forgotten little pile of her toenail clippings. On the coffee table. The absent minded leavings of pre-trip care-taking. It might have been cause for a snide sideways remark. Otherwise. But, just now, it’s the only bit of her I’ve got close, and I laugh at myself as my heart leaps out, and I sweep the little pile into my cupped palm. There's lightning now. That's her favorite. ..