The skies were a dull gray, rain falling in ceaseless torrents of water that swirled around the sky and then fell heavily to flood the school grounds.

The air was a bitter kind of cold- the kind that made one shiver and pull a coat tightly around the body while gazing about in a sort of anxious apprehension.

And the wind is pushy, uncaring, demanding. It is faceless and nameless, but it wraps around the grounds like it exists as more than a puff of air that pretends to be the Northern Sea.

And somehow, in the middle of all of these unhappy tears falling from the sky, there is a girl.

She is wet and soggy, lying limply in a puddle of pooled mud.

Her hair is stringy and sticking wetly to her face, her face is thin and white, her hands are slightly trembling and her knees are drawn up to her chest as if that could block out the pain, as if that could keep the memories from returning and overwhelming her delicate barricade of thoughts.

She is hiccuping in breaths and blinking- either tears or rain, they make no difference.

She is not sure of where she is or why- she just knows that there is this feeling in her chest that won't allow her to- this tearing of her soul.

She doesn't know why or when or what or how- she simply knows that she is and he is and they are but they are not.

That they were.

She knows that there had been a they but that now there is nothing but a her and a him, separated by words without contractions that ended up wounding much more than she could have ever imagined.

She lets out a sickening laugh, burying her head further into the cold, sucking mud as she contemplates the realization that it had come down to this- the difference between the plural and the singular, the is and the once was.

And it is with this thought that the sky's tears turn into her tears, and the air's cold turns into the cold inside of her, and the wind's pretending breaks down the flimsy facade of imagination that she had slowly, painstakingly built up.

And so she cries and cries and cries, cries deeply and longingly for what had been and what was now lost- for what she had done and what she could never do again.

And so she cries for the lost feeling of his lips on hers, his fingers buried in her thick hair, his eyes that gazed at her with a depth that was almost frightening.

And so she cries for the lightning striking down, here and here and here, everywhere around her and near her and inside of her.

And she welcomes it.

She welcomes the pain.

For it keeps her from remembering, for that one breathless second, that they are over, that he loved him more than he loved her, that he would refuse, always, always refuse, to love her as he should.

And in a way, she knows it is right.

In a sick, distorted, and perverted way, she knows he is right.

For she shouldn't be with him, she shouldn't love him, she shouldn't wish it was his breath that ghosted over her skin late at night, or that it was his soft kisses that sent her to sleep.

But should and shouldn't are interchangeable, at least to her.

Again, again the words.

Again the meaning of words twists up what she wants and what can never be and she hates them, oh, she hates words more than she could possibly hate anything, more than she hates him and him and them and everything else in this godforsaken place that she knows she must call her mind.

So she focuses on that- the blind pain and frustration and anger.

And she realizes, in that moment, in that second of sudden epiphany, that the sky will never let up- it will never brighten.

That it will stay as it is forever.

That eternity is nothing to a dull, crying sky.

And neither is she.

So now the rain falls for her and the air is cold for her and the wind buffets the trees for her, no longer pretending, no longer laughing in its unimaginable fantasies.

For now...for now, the skies cry.