Quiet Rain Poem by Chase Dryden

You came to me quiet as rain not yet fallen
Afraid of how you might fail yourself
The fear I see in your now lying face changes to puzzlement as my hands reach to embrace you
You come to me with your age wrapped in excuses and afraid of its silence
Into the paradise our younger lives made of this bed and room
Leaked the world and all its questioning and now those shapes terrify us most that remind us of our own
Easier now to check longings and sentiment to pretend not to care overmuch
You look out across the years and you come to me quite as the last of senses closing
You come to me quiet as bulbs not yet broken out into sunlight
What love added to a common shape no longer seems a miracle like the scent of roses in a slaughterhouse
The tears you have forced from my eyes are overwhelmingly bitter the sweetness of our history
Gone like a quiet rain