January 2003

When she recalls that period in her life she likens it to a piece of hard candy she'd often enjoyed as a child. Round colorful, tangy sweet on the outside and bitter at the center.

Three years had come and gone and since then Campbell had married a wonderful man from Kentucky, given birth to a son, moved to another part of the state, taken up pottery and yoga, leased a Mercedes and purchased a beach house in Anguilla, her daughter Macon had made her a grandmother and even with all of those life changes, her heart remained the same, her heart remained with him.

She wished she could say that she only thought of Donovan when she heard Etta James belt out At Last, or in the dead of night, mid summer, when it rained, snowed or when the sun shined so brightly it made the day too beautiful to behold.

He had been beautiful.

She wished she could say that her mind reached back to those times only when life was unbalanced and sad, but that would be an out right lie because she thought about that man even when she was happy and wrapped up tight in her husband’s arms.

She thought about him when she held her new born son to her breast, pulled her fingers through her hair, when she sighed, sneezed, breathed.

She thought about him.

She found him on her mind when she was surrounded by silence, engulfed by noise, when she sat, walked, stood in line at the grocery store.

Nikki Giovanni must have known someone similar, because she wrote about him in Cancers (not necessarily a love poem.)

Damn! She thought about him.

And she asked herself, would she leave, would she leave everything she'd ever wanted and had finally gotten? Would she put all she had behind her if she opened her door one day and found him standing there, empty handed but with a full heart?

Would she leave everything and everyone she had if he opened his mouth and simply said:

" Hello. I'm sorry. I love you."

Would she go?

Shit, she believed she would.