• as I sit here wondering
    just what I should write about
    I am startled with thoughts of you

    once again I am amazed by the tenacity
    that you showed throughout your life

    when we first met, I was an outlaw
    living on the edge of society’s norms
    while you were the Heir Apparent
    to your parents vast fortunes

    it was like gasoline and fire right from the start
    an all-consuming conflagration of wild times

    when your parents found out, they demanded
    that you should come back to your senses
    and leave that “dirty, filthy piece of scum!”

    when you laughed in the face of their demands
    they fell back on their second wave of attack

    that is when they offered you the moon
    if you would only come back home

    little did they know that you were already home!

    they were convinced that you were just acting out
    that you were using me to pay them back
    for some ill-conceived slight
    that would bring them embarrassment
    when the country club crowd
    finally found out

    it was never about them

    it just always seemed to me
    that your parents knew so little about love
    that they could not recognize the fact
    that love had finally taken up
    that lonely space in both our hearts

    now that you are gone
    hardly a day goes by that I do not feel anguish
    at the thought that I was left here, alone
    without you

    it has been six years, three months and thirteen days
    since you returned to your family’s embrace

    finally, after what seemed like the thousandth time
    your Mother actually acknowledged my existence

    as I was standing there, lost in my lonely dreams
    I felt her hand as it timidly reached out
    across that indefinable gulf
    to touch mine

    for what seemed like forever
    the two of us stood there
    with no animosity between us

    then, as I turned to go I heard her say
    “you really did love her, didn’t you?”

    as a tear traced it’s way down my face
    “she was my heart, my life, my love”

    as I put a single white rose on your headstone
    she asked, “would you come see me?”

    as I looked at her I saw only the lonely desperation
    of a Mother reaching out to embrace a lost love

    “I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I would like
    to know what my little girl was like as an adult”

    God! how I wanted to scream into her face, “NO!”

    then I realized just what it cost her
    to come to me, here
    in your final resting place
    to make that gesture
    to ask that question
    and I thought about
    what you would
    want me to do

    I replied

    yes