“Never Hide What You Feel Inside!”

Goodness!

Existing with intolerable pain, coupled with swallowing an onslaught of pills each day, surviving a grueling surgery, and then enduring a recovery, was finally looking forward to my first pain-free day in five very long months.

And, was ready for some down-home living!

However, only took a few seconds for my wishful thinking to incinerate because after reading the e-mail from my American idol my excruciating pain found its familiar place once again and quickly jockeyed to pierce the capillaries leading to and from my damn heart!

Involuntarily, cascading from my ebony eyes were revolutionary tears. Each delicately eased down my sickened face which was also drenched with sorrow and total disbelief.

Reading his communiqué was the equivalent of a monstrous earthquake erupting within the literary world. Simply, my guru was writing his final article!

How would I ever breathe again?

Call me a “gullible romantic” but I love and adore this literary genius. He was my “George” (Jackson) and I fantasized being his “Angela” (Davis).

What a powerful and magnetic duo!

Anyways, upon submitting each of my articles was left cagey and often filled with angst and frighten anticipation as I secretly waited for editorial comments and suggestions from either him or from my “soul mate.” Did they each know that the cadence and ebb and flow of my day depended upon their feedback, advice, comments and/or remarks?

Happily, more often than not passed their “literary smell test” with flying colors!

Hooray!

If questioned, my “soul mate” could attest that I have a horrible habit of spoiling those whom I love. So, in the space remaining, please allow me to “smother” my literary mentor with “what I feel inside!”

Dear Mr. Lucius Gantt:

Thank You!

Thank you for taking an interest in this downtrodden novice. I only hope that some day you will fully grasp the full extent of the seismic magnitude that you created within my heart.

Explaining why I adore you would take me a lifetime. Revealing some of the reasons why you are loved is by far much simpler…..

You are loved for taking the raw complexities of life and forcing us to consciously sift through our realities.

You are loved for making us get off our dreamy-eyed and passive azz and stop making elusive excuses as to why we aren’t or can’t become a “game changer.”

You are loved for reminding us that it should be our “manifest destiny” to forge a trusting bond and relationship with one another so that we can stop flirting with success.

You are loved for unapologetically disrupting, disturbing, and dismantling the “status quo.”

And, you are loved for being an authentic, insightful, and passionate conversationalist who wrote the most astounding and captivating articles in this century!

As your devoted readers, we yearned to read what erotic “love affair” you were going to have with your pen that week.

Then, who could ever forget your prize winning essay about the “kat?”

My, my, my, my, my, my!

Laugh out loud!

I am deeply honored to know that you “symbolically” passed the literary torch to me. While I will never be able to fill your shoes, thank you for allowing me to walk in your footsteps by teaching me to “never hide what I feel inside.”