Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald of Montgomery, Alabama

Daddy's little girl;
A pure Magnolia blossom
Among the debutantes
And poor little rich girls
Speaking their poor French
Among the snooty Parisians
Listening to Josephine Baker
And the early kings of jazz
Meeting Hemingway, Stein and Picasso
In smoky little dives on
The Left Bank, near the Seine.

There was no Prohibition in France.

The traffic lights sparkling red and green
Through the Springtime mist,
Colors running, fading in the evening rain shower,
Cut flowers from a cart,
Champagne cocktails at the bar
Leaving little time for letters, novels and such.

Until the dream died,
Lost in the struggle to survive
When the words didn't come as easily
And Depression fell on them all:
Hemingway to Key West, Picasso back to Spain
Only Stein stayed with her Alice
And Zelda abandoned Paris and the Jazz Age behind her
Living alone in a mountainside retreat
Among the evergreens of North Carolina,
The cool mountain air scorched her lungs,
The fire and the spark
Ending in a pile of ashes on a hillside.