"It wasn't for you, Menelaus, Helen..." Odysseus once told me. "It wasn't for anyone. How can one endure such beauty?"

His words sounded convincing. That her beauty suffocated me or her sorrow or her confused, insatiable soul. They convinced me. 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 differently. What does it mean to love? Damn if you have uttered this verb five times in your entire life, four of them for your mother. You tremble - they have taught you to tremble. To love means to become the one you love. Her fate becomes my fate. If Helen died, my heart would be buried. When I saw her sail away with Paris, a fresh breeze, cool, it blew inside me.

"The bastard stole your woman!" I shout. 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 keep it from slipping away, we hold it in the palm of our hand. I didn't hold onto the moment. I let it flutter away. Far from me.

Our story was painted in blood and lies. Everything happened differently than what you have heard, but it happened and will happen again a thousand thousand times until the end of the world - so what? Do you find anything beautiful in that?

Beautiful was the twilight when Helen escaped with Menelaus. Beautiful was the dawn that opened in the sea with Paris. Surrendered to divine joy. Leaving everything behind. This is what the singers should sing.