In quiet moments when the sky darkens
And rain trickles like teardrops from the clouds,
I remember the emotions of another place,
Another time not so long ago
When you were by my side;
Happy voices—the trill of laughter;
Sadness—the voice of tears;
Joyful hellos followed by good-byes that came Too quickly;
Time passed like water through a sieve
In that city I love so much.

And so I returned to this other place,
A place of loneliness,
And to the sorrow of a life that has never Allowed the sun to pass through
its blinds of despair,
To a bed filled with dreams that mingle with nightmares,
To the hope of something more to come
Entwined with the fear of an evermore of nothingness.

Lovers pass by in the rain, laughing and unaware,
Tangled in private ecstasy;
Their black umbrellas open to envelop the night and their intimacy,
Blotting out the pain of remembrance
And bringing me back to the business of living without you;
With aching heart, I push hard at the memory of you,
Fighting the desire, the longing for something I can never possess—
But everything that is you pushes back,
Forcing me to hold you tenderly
To the very heart that threatens to break.

Magnolias, jazz, and fiery founts,
Hurricanes and French Quarter parades,
A city of tombs on a cloudy afternoon at the brink of Spring;
Surrounded by the dead and wanting so much to finally live,
To come alive and love on Rue Bourbon at midnight
And laugh like Eve with her lover
In the sunshine of a Garden District restaurant,
While branches of pecan trees waltz boldly overhead;
All romantic notions that quickly give way
To the reality of fragile, awkward moments never to be recaptured;
Moments filled with harsh words never to be unspoken
And spilled tears begging for love without reproach.

Our lips never touched in those early morning hours,
Nor did the gentle candlelight ever warm our bodies as one—
Yet the passion that trembles inside,
The unrequited love still harbored painfully and quietly within
Is as much a part of me as my memories of Bourbon Street at midnight and
fiery fountains,
French Quarter parades and magnolia trees,
Garden District restaurants and the somber dead,
And that great and wonderful river running through the midst of a city that
never sleeps.

All my life I shall mourn missed opportunity,
Those fragile moments that passed me by like lovers in the rain;
Imagining always the many things we might have seen,
Might have felt,
Might have been together,
You and I,
In New Orleans.

 
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