1. Graveyard

It’s raining. Isn’t this where it all began? I came to visit an old friend and saw him wandering around, aimlessly, it seemed. An hour later he was still there, and he was watching me. “Do you always wear black?” That were his first words. I was too surprised to answer at first. I looked down at the ground, in which my friend was entombed, her final resting place. “No,” I said, “I don’t always wear black. But today I do. Today I visit my friend, she died a while ago and I come visit her sometimes. Why do you ask?” I still remember that smile on his face, the smile he would show me more often in the time between then and now. He smiled and said; “Because black looks good on you.” For the second time, I was surprised beyond answering immediately. For a while he just floated in the rain, looking up with his eyes closed now and then, looking like a ghost, or one of the stone angels that were veiled by shrouds of water. The rain seemed to give him wings, like those statues, but unlike them, he didn’t look down in mourning, he looked up, smiling. “And why are you here?” I finally asked. I wondered if he had someone lying in the dark earth too. “Oh, I just like graveyards. They’re peaceful, beautiful and calm. I come here often and walk around, look at the people.” He turned his head so that he could see me, but the rain would still come down straight on his face. It almost looked like he was crying, smiling. “But it’s raining!” I wrapped my arms around my shoulders, wet against wet in the wet rain. “Well, you’re here too, aren’t you?” He laughed  out loud and his breaths were tiny little clouds in the fog. He came towards me a bit, then climbed on top of a pedestal which held a mourning angel. He spread his arms in the rain, and then embraced the angel, pressing his cheek against the cold marble. “You must think I’m crazy now.” I didn’t. I wouldn’t. Not ever. He looked more and more like an angel in my eyes, his wet hair flattened to his back. I didn’t know it was ash blonde then, the rain made it seem several shades darker. I smiled at him and walked towards the statue and him, looking up into the rain. “I don’t think you’re crazy. But maybe you would like to get out of the rain. I don’t live close, but I know a café near here, we can get some coffee or something.” I think he was suprised I offered him my company, I know by now that he assumed I thought he was crazy bacause people usually thought that of him. I still don’t see why, he was no more crazy than any other of us. We went to that little café of mine, and we got our coffee. I also promised to meet him again. On the graveyard. It was nice, going there and knowing there would be someone waiting for you, a living angel between the dead.

2. Funeral

I came back on a sunny Sunday, to see with my own eyes the way his hair shone in the sunlight, to see him smile in the warmth of that golden light, but I could not find him. I searched the whole graveyard and then, in the oldest part, where the tombstones are so old time has whithered away the names on them, and where there are a few real tombs, stone chambers built half above, half under the ground, there I found him. He was sitting on a tomb, his legs hanging down the mossy wall. He looked up from whatever he was doing and smiled that smile of his again. “I hid.” He smiled. “I hid, so that you would only be able to find me when you wanted to. And it seems you did. Why don’t you sit with me, on this house for those who are dead.” His words, spoken in the sunlight of early afternoon, still had something mysterious about them, something mystical, like he himself was one of the dead, and he lived there, in that little mossy house. The stone was so comfortable, covered in moss, that we sat there all afternoon and talked. By the time the bright sunlight had begun to dim, and the last visitors had departed, we were still there. “Shouldn’t we go home?” I asked without knowing where his home was. “Just a little more-” he said and pointed toward the high graveyard fence and the trees lining it. “-look…” I looked. There were little lights appearing close to the ground, everywhere, like fairies they danced up, and dissapeared.  Suddenly, a ray of sunlight shot though the branches of the trees and I saw it had been the setting sun, illuminating floating dust. That didn’t make it any less beautiful. He smiled at me. “Now we should go home.” We walked to the gate together, and I finally dared ask him. “Where do you live?” I said, and he pointed down the road. “I live that way. Where do you live?” “Same way.” I smiled. We walked together the road which would be walked several times before I invited him into my home. That would be after we’d met several more times, on the graveyard, after I’d learned that he called the little dancing lights ‘rising spirits’, because they looked like they were coming from the graves. The day he came into my home it was raining again, and I made him soup. He walked around the house, drying his hair with a towel. His hair was longer than any of the men I’d met before, it went past his shoulders, flowing onto his back. I told him, I’d never seen hair like his. He smiled. We kept meeting for months, and when it was winter, he stayed with me for a few nights. We’d sit near the fireplace, tell eachother what we saw in the flames. That winter, because of the cold, we met indoors more often, at my place, and at his. He lived in an flat overlooking a busy street, two bedrooms even though he lived alone. He never let me stay in that second bedroom, and he never did. It was his deadroom. I’ve only recently come to understand what that meant. Some could say he was obsessd by death, I say he was prepared for it. I wasn’t.

3. Wake

Rain. I remember how the rain would tap on the window at night or early morning, when he was asleep and I was awake. I would watch his chest rise and fall with his breathing, I would never forget how much he looked like an angel, from the first day I met him. I remember that night at my house, at the fire. It was cold so we sat close, sharing body heat. He was tired and leaned his head on my shoulder. I even remember how his hair smelled when I kissed it. I could sense that he smiled. He actually never smiled that much, to other people that is. He always smiled a lot at me, all the more surprising it was to me to see it wasn’t his thing to do in public. But when his eyes met mine, they smiled, and when I smiled at him, he always smiled back. Always. After that night, we’d somehow become closer, and I don’t think I even was surprised, not that much, the first time we kissed. It seemed so natural. Is it strange that, even now, I can remember every detail of him, but I can’t remember our first time. We’d probably been building towards that for weeks, the intimacy growing. I only remember that it slowly got natural, a thing we did, being together was like breathing. We’d decided to move in together too, about four weeks ago.  He never hasted things, he was often later than he’d promised, but not so late that I would be worried. In fact, I wasn’t even worried that day, he said he’d be back in an hour or so. I didn’t worry, it wasn’t unusual for him to be this late. I told myself not to worry. When the phone rang and a voice said my name. It was a voice I didn’t recognise.  “Alexis Fisher?” It asked, and I managed a yes, not wanting to know what the voice had to tell me. “Do you know…?” And there it was. His name. The name I had whispered, shouted, laughed, written a thousand times, spoken by a complete stranger. “I think you’d better come down here.” The voice said, confirming my darkest fears. I stepped into my car and rode to the hospital, unable to understand what had happened. There had been an accident. It was serious, the voice had said. I sat next to him in the hospital, my angel wrapped in crisp white sheets. I brought him home when his will was found. I laid him down on the bed in his deadroom and I watched over his final hours. It rained that night, when he opened his eyes one last time, looking up at me. He smiled. I smiled back and held on to his hand. When the first rays of the sun touched his face that dawn, it still felt warm. Just a little bit. It rained on the day I met him, it rained on the night he died, but this morning the sun is shining, the marble angels have their haloes, and seem to look up, instead of down. I’ve cut off a small lock of his hair, and it’s shining in my hands, like gold. His body will be buried, and in time returned to earth itself, but I will have this lock of hair, my pictures and my memories. It’s been two weeks.
      Angels cry rain.