3/16/13

Sonoma's Last Request
By Paula Ray


"My heart is an ocean receding into the blazing sunset and you’re the sky that hovers out of touch. You’re always there dangling a magic moon or constellations of our memories, sustaining me with your weeping clouds. My life hinges on your tears, love. How ashamed I am to drink your sorrow. But you, an endless invitation to rise, an unrestrained forgiveness, you kiss me from afar with your breeze and I writhe, swelling with a symphony of life. Carry my song to heaven. I’m depending on you.”

I knew her by many names, but that isn’t the point. The point is, I always knew her, her essence. She had that way about her, that way of peeling the skin right off of you with the fire of her intensity. Everything about her was intense.

We met in jail, talking through brick walls, loving in a land beyond geography. She told me I was her sky, her freedom, her air. I know it seems strange, but it really got me.

Decades washed over us, but still that seedling planted from our first hello grew bigger than either of us imagined, bigger than we could climb. It will outlive us.

I guess that’s something to be proud of, isn’t it?

I only wish I’d had the opportunity to hold her hand, at least once. But maybe I did, in my own way.

Maybe she's holding mine now. I'd like to think so.


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Paula Ray is a musician and writer who lives by the beach. Her work has appeared in oodles of online zines including Daily Love and Weirdyear.