Then, are you master of us all? You didn't teach her that. Was she supposed to imbibe it from my quiet subservience?

But the sky was never quite the same shade of blue again.

I know nothing of God or the Devil. I have never seen a vision nor learned a secret that would damn or save my soul.

The world changes, we do not, therein lies the irony that kills us.

I hear the birds singing. Listen. I hear them in their cage. The others-all our kind who know of her-they think of her as heartless, but she wasn't heartless. She was only aware of things which I didn't learn till so many decades had passed. She knew secrets that only suffering can teach.

But during all these years I had a vague but persistent desire to return to New Orleans. I never forgot New Orleans. And when we were in tropical places and places of those flowers and trees that grow in Louisiana, I would think of it acutely and I would feel for my home the only glimmer of desire I felt for anything outside my endless pursuit of art.

So until we meet again, I am thinking of you always; I love you; I wish you were here...in my arms.