Words From the Past…

“Elle était longue la traversée du désert,

Elle sera courte notre rencontre,

Mais tendre et inoubliable ton souvenir.”

I wrote this very short poem many years ago. It is not written in English because at the time, my muse still persisted in writing in French as to disassociate itself from the Americanized version of myself that I was fast becoming.  As the poem states, I let my emotions developed fully knowing that I was traveling trough an emotional desert, fully knowing that my encounter with him would be brief; and that nonetheless, my memory of him would be sweet and unforgettable.

He was the first person I truly connected with after my divorce. It was an intellectual connection He validated my intellect; he reminded me of whom I wanted to be. He saw in me what others, including myself, had failed to see. Needless to say that this was a platonic relationship. At the time, I thought that he was: too old, too white, too forbidden.  As the years went by, I realized that love had nothing to do with how I felt; I was really in love with the way he made me feel. Of these three verses, that so profoundly expressed how I felt at the time, only one still rings true; the one referring to the shortness of our encounter.

I am still traveling through the deserts of my life but I know now that it is by crossing the deserts of our lives that we replenish our souls. I also know for sure that this man would not even cross my mind, if it were not for those few words written in a moment of insouciance…