Like so many of the poems I have written I wrote this while online and in the midst of a chat. I was talking to a very good friend of mine, Katerina.

It seems that the people we become fast friends with online all have one endearing quality… they are easy to talk to and so much fun to be with. Katerina is no exception to that rule except that she tends to take that rule to new heights. One other quality she possesses, I feel totally at ease writing anything or saying anything to her. Because of this, I was able to write Epitaph with a minimum of tears and get it all out at once.

I had told her that I could feel something rolling around inside my heart and mind. A phrase I use when I feel the makings of a poem starting to form within. This “something” felt both painful and full of love at the same time.

She began talking to me then about my writing. How I do it, and where I get the ideas and images for it from, and how the lines form in my mind. All along the way she kept telling me to just start writing, advice I eventually took.

Our conversation lasted a couple hours that evening. I was a tad preoccupied… but that is nothing new. I may be one of the most scatterbrained chat partners out there. That in mind, I have doubt that she even realized I was writing something between posts. When I finished, Kat was the first to read it… and she cried.

The Epitaph is my farewell to Sonya. A series of descriptive memories leading to the realization that while the love remains pure and true, the main components of the relationship, she and I, are no longer together, and never will be again. The details are unimportant, save to her and I, but for the space of five months in the spring and summer of 2000, she and I shared something that can only be described as amazing.

Her skin was soft, supple, and cool like silk. Her fingers slender, hands so petite as to be almost fragile. Hair skin and eyes dark… she had an ethereal beauty. Though her soul was fractured, she was beautiful both in and out and her eyes seemed to reflect all the wonders of the world!

As with all of my poetry and prose, I use word choice and placement, spacing, line form and especially images, both complete and incomplete, to convey the strength of my emotions. Needless to say, my emotions were very strong for Sonya, and I hope I have done an adequate job of conveying that.

As I said in the poem all I have left are my memories, and yet my memories still seem so fantastic as to be possible only as a fantasy. I still remember the electric way she kissed me, and how sweet her lips were. The way her skin felt beneath my hands still makes me smile. She so entranced me that being with her was like being in heaven, and no matter how I fought it, I could not stop myself from looking at her, reaching to touch her… the way her eyes seemed to crinkle and sparkle at the same time. I lived to see her smile directed my way.

The first time she ever kissed me, she caught me so beyond surprise that the poem I was writing has never been finished. I still have no idea where that train of thought went, but the images that flashed in my mind at the touch of her lips against mine, is still as clear as it was that day. She was Amazing.

I was still with her when Lonestar sang their “Amazed” song, and I found myself singing it to her at work and under my breath during the days. That song really says it all, she was amazing, she still amazes me.