I saw your ghost standing under the rain yesterday

I didn't know what to make of it

For the better part of this morning, I was looking back at photographs of us -

Once vivid with color, now they scream at me in sepia tone

I wonder why you seem so much like a flashback these days

When, not five months ago, I said "I love you" every night thinking you would be my future

This nostalgia is abrupt and harsh and unexpected, callous with its timing

Because, whenever it rains, I file through the wrinkles in my brain,

To dig up memories of you -

Like the first time you hugged me in a filled auditorium

And it felt like the room emptied itself at your embrace

The hours spent in useless midnight conversations,

Sleeping with the phone on my face after you leave

I dreamt of you some nights. And if I didn't, I chose not to dream at all.

Walking around buildings so much taller than the sky, thinking one day we'd be living

In a small, provincial cottage wearing cardigans and drinking chocolate milk

While the clouds filled the sky with gloom

You and me - we knew we'd bloom

Back when I was just your crush and all our days felt like a honeymoon

And all the moments I was so proud only we knew about

Once, in a drunken evening in my old best friend's condominium room,

my friend asked me if I thought you and I would last

And I responded, "For all I know, teenage romances don't ever last."

But even when I knew, I ended up not knowing

Not knowing to cherish that final kiss, not knowing which it would be

Not knowing to leave an imprint of your hand the last time its weight was on mine

Not knowing which joke of mine would make you smile one final time

Not knowing you had known all along that this was what you wanted

Because the cottage in the province in which you and I were to live in

Is now abandoned and filled with cobwebs

The cardigans that you and I were to wear on those rainy days

Is stuck under the bed that, I only now see, was never made

Oh, these rainy days

And your ghost that likes to hang around standing under it

How I thought I knew it all

How I really should have known.

Read more poems like this in my poetry collection "If I Can See You When I Pass Away." You can order it via https://aidanbernales.carrd.co or through my social media accounts: aidanreuel on IG and Facebook.