Rhetorical

yeah ... there was someone ... a long time ago, lifetimes, really ... eons, and she burned me ... oh, I don't mean in a bad way, like betrayal, I mean inside - DEEP inside, like torch burns steel, she seared herself into my being - fired her name into my marrow, with immutability and intent ... like gods etch their ids on the pillars of eternity, she changed me ... forever ... by the simple act of dripping my name from her lips, she altered the course of my destiny, and became the very breath of my soul ... now, tell me - what, in the name of heaven, is a person to do with that?? my eyes have become muddled with the endless fix of faces that have danced in them in the forty years since last I saw her, yet everything I've done, every triumph and tragedy, every love and lie and loss, has been tempered by the standard that she set THEN, in her resolute sublimity ... her fingertip melodies, the agile ease of her limbs, her exhuberance and wit and command of my gaze and reason, the shine of her regard … there is not a single hour that passes that does not SOMEhow wind back with inexorable relativity to the ideals that she placed within me, yet her dazzled eyes have not swum in mine for more than four decades ... I have not heard the lilt of her voice, smelled the mystery of Je Reviens upon her skin, or felt the warm wonder of her flesh beneath my hands, for nearly five hundred full moons! how, in all humility, is a fool like me supposed to bear such a yoke? how do I let go of something that will not let go of me? how do I purge a poison that is my very lifeblood?? what are we sad, silly, human creatures supposed to do with the numberless questions we pose, that have, in all seriousness, no chance of an answer?!? yes ... there WAS someone, a long time ago ... lifetimes ago, really ... eons … yeah. Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden, October 20, 2022