Scarlett...The O'Hara Damsel.

The thought slips from my tongue like a curtain of sapiential red velvet.

Am I as Scarlett as the Damsel O'Hara.

It's then that I hear her whispering upon the wind...

Don't turn around. "Don't become me". Her voice echoing across the centuries.

But it's too late. The damage is already done.

I've become Scarlett - as contumacious and solipsistic as the damsel O’Hara - only a tad more mature.

I desperately want to turn around to behold her stubborn, fire‑lit transformation - the kind where a woman stands in the doorway of her own life, fists clenched, dress swirling, refusing to be undone by circumstance.

I'm not echoing Scarlett’s fragility.

I'm invoking her defiance, her flare for survival, her unapologetic center‑stage energy.

I must turn around to the moment when she says, “As God is my witness…” and the world realizes she’s not asking for permission to rise.

My voice, though, feels different - more...self‑aware, less trapped in the plantation fantasy and more rooted in my own lineage of resistance and fortitude.

I'm not reenacting her story; I'm repurposing her fire.

Her flare for red silk and vermillion rebellion.

....

I am almost Scarlett...only...from her stubbornness I have learned to recognize when to relent just a little...

Without stepping back, nor turning around - but remembering the Scarlett era, where the rigors of her time would have also prompted me to rebel.

She stays trembling behind me...A woman who refused to be cornered

A woman who would not starve emotionally, spiritually or creatively for anyone

A woman who must pivot, reinvent, and outlast the storm.

A woman who knows drama is a tool, not a blood red cage.

......

Let me neither hug past sorrows nor turn to glance back upon the pale mansions of the astonish’d dead;

Giving in to the dark phantom's admiring light...

Never again to tread into irremeable, literary and archaic nights

For of such grave consequences, I can neither gaze back nor turn around

Now no longer do my thoughts readily rise in pink or purple pomp from the temple of my consciousness

Even though, sometimes, my once trembling eager words, thoughts, deeds and feelings do sorely forsake me

And Dewdrops no longer tremble on the grassy edges of my imagination

neither blazing high nor dancing happy upon the temple of my thoughts.

I still call upon the fair Goddess Urania, she who leads the blushing band of muses,

to you I present my humble offerings with unsullied hands;

may the muses bless me, collectively inspiring creativity, knowledge, and artistic excellence.

May they highlight the interplay between divine inspiration and my human frailty - emphasizing, teaching, guiding my learning of the arts as central to my remembering.

Awaken now my fading voice, transmuted by thy wand, changing my nature, my substance...elevate me different...better

let my thoughts finally open, and my arms expand...

Shrugging off their past sorrows, and begin to emerge anew.

Let me not turn around to behold what once was

Where once a Night’s dazzled Empress embraced the golden flame

And was not Charmed with soft words, soothing with amorous wiles.

Make light my iron-hearted breast, while Pluto smiles.

My smile trembling, while he leads me from the pale mansions of the astonish’d dead...

Give this fairly tarnished damsel to admiring light -

Never terrified...never turning back the pages of time.

Only Looking Ahead. Fearlessly!!!!