Any Reason for Being
Only looking backward through the prism that is memory can I see the child taking up the shackles and fastening them around his neck… The thunder rumbles just before the sun awakes. I can feel the wetness on the pavement right outside my door. A flash of lightning and the deluge begins again… Back to the child in bondage— I remember him. I knew her then. We were barely adolescents, given gray-blue books with a bust of Marcus Aurelius prominent on the cover. Nearly two millennia since that nation state of Rome began it’s slow ebb. Then, the Earth was flat. Now, humans have seen their footprints on the moon. Still I am no closer to understanding the reason for my being than on the day I was born.
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