"She wasn't for you, Menelaus, Helen..." Odysseus once told me. "She wasn't for anyone. How much beauty can you endure?" His words sounded convincing. That her beauty suffocated me, or her mourning, or her tangled, unquenchable soul. They convinced. But they weren't true. Listen to my truth. I let her go because I loved her. And I knew, I felt, I longed for her to start her life anew. What does it mean to love? Damn if you've uttered that verb five times in your life, four of them for your mother. You fear it – you've been taught to fear it. To love means to become the one you love. Her fate, my fate. If Helen died, my heart would be buried. When I saw her sail away with Paris, fresh air, cool, blew within me. "The bastard stole your wife!" I scoff. Did Helen belong to me? Nothing belongs to us – the past? the future? what we can embrace or carry on our backs? no! nothing, nothing! We only have the moment. And to prevent it from escaping, we crush it in our palm. I didn't crush the moment. I let it flutter. Away from me. Our story was painted in blood and lies. Everything happened differently from what you've heard, yet they happened and will happen again a thousand thousand times until the end of the world – so what? Do you find anything beautiful in these? Beautiful was the evening when Helen eloped with Menelaus. Beautiful was the dawn when she set sail with Paris. Surrendered to her divine joy. Leaving everything behind her. That's what the bards should sing about.