we sat on opposite ends of the couch with the same blanket stretched across both of our laps, knees upraised. no lights, just your eyes to fill the room, cradling your guitar like a child. always. and the sound of rain outside. again.

i'd never heard you play that song before and i've never heard it since, but it reached inside me with a splintering wooden spoon and mixed together a great mass of emotions that had been clinging to opposite sides of me, wailing when they got too near. now, a solid combination. i started weeping, you stopped playing, looked at me with eyes so concerned i always wondered if you were rehearsing them for some false occasion.

i don't know what it was; i don't know what we needed.

the first time i finally heard the original version, i cried, too, but by then i already knew your cotton voice on the words and your long fingers on the strings. i cry for everybody who has ever been sad.

after we put another bandaid on it, i told you to keep playing, but that darkness had gone away, and your roommate stomped the mud from his feet on the front porch and flung the door wide with the rain behind him and his immediate presence encircling us. grateful as i was for him, you never were. he set your scowl in so many places.

you never asked why, but i guess it was known, unspoken, and i shed many more tears but we never sat like that again.