[still more things I just don't want to lose]

"Duty is a choice." --PM, on the Aeneid.

And then I wrote this which is totally unedited but here it is anyway:

Duty is a set of strings
taut with my weight
as I dangle, my feet
just off the floor
In that empty space
so much feeling teems
But the strings shift
and I dance
to music not my own.

--thinking of Aeneas's line as he abandons Dido: Italiam non sponte sequor, "I follow Italy not of my own will."