Ramona Blue

by Julie Murphy

At what point does another’s person’s extraordinary become your ordinary?

I’ll never figure out how it is that some people can work so hard and get paid so little, while so many people who are paid the most hardly work at all.

For so long I believed I was the only person who truly knew what it felt like to be left. But maybe it’s not just standing still that gets you left behind. You can be going places and still find yourself abandoned in some way.

Love doesn’t disappear when you give it away, and new love doesn’t make old love any less legitimate.

It’s not that I’m gay. It’s that I’m gay in Eulogy, Mississippi. It’s not that I’m tall. It’s that I’m too tall for the trailer I live in. It’s not that I’m poor. It’s that I’m too poor to do and have everything I want. Life is a series of conflicts, and maybe the only resolution is accepting that not all problems are meant to be solved.