Three Men

"What should I do?" the brown nymph asks me.
And the three men begin to go to work.
On my left, a man with harrowing eyes and a kid-skin briefcase hisses into my ear:
"Tell her to leave him. Tell her to go. It may be a bad idea, but...how would she know?"
His tongue is forked and filled with honey fire.
I must listen as his argument is compelling and makes my heart swell.
A cooling sensation runs over my nerves as I look over to the right.
A tye-dyed hippie in blue jeans sits with a guitar. A halo over his head.
"Man," he begins, "You have to help this girl's soul."
Desire burns white hot through me and then fades with cold reality.
The right, the left. The truth, the lie. The correct, the false.
But of the three men, the choice belongs to the man in the middle.
Me.
Alone, even with a voice on each shoulder.
So the man in the middle speaks:
"You have to leave him," he says.
And the Nymph bows to the wind and listens.
but...but....There's always a damned but.
She strides away from her former and clueless beau, but...
she goes to the red bastard.
Worse than the first man on my left, the red bastard taunts and tantalizes.
His words are hollow, but the nymph is deaf.
His actions are empty, but the nymph is blind.
She is enraptured.
In creating my own failing, the three men stare in disbelief.
The man on the left wipes his glasses in envy of the red bastard.
The man on the right pulls his halo down and whispers a silent prayer for her soul.
The man in the middle is unable to move.
He asks, "What about me? I love you too...."
He is met with a silence, a stare, and a touch.
The nymph says, "The time is not right. You are my rock, but he has my heart."
A hole.
Darkness,
and the man on my left laughs.
A cackle that reaches into my soul and cuts my heart string.
The man on the right merely states, "This will happen again."
The red bastard has his way and breaks the nymph. And when she returns,
the man in the middle puts her together again...and watches her leave
for a second time.
The wheel spins.
The three men move on to the next choices.
The man on the right strums his guitar,
and the man on the left adds to his briefcase.
The man in the middle collapses under their weight.

How sad that this story is mine and yours.