Last night though I had a sudden realization that I was not happy, and had not been for a few days. Too much was on my mind and while I was scrambling to develop a list of priorities, “being happy” somehow fell off of my to-do list for a brief moment. So, I did what any writer would do: I wrote a poem, got work done, and felt oddles and noodles better about everything.

A compatriot poet had recently sent me a poem about Pyrrhic victories in everyday life, and I got to thinking about the nature of life itself. Why on Earth was I making myself unhappy working so hard to be…what, published? Why don’t I just take a little time to relax. Life is short. I mused on these thoughts, and the answer came to me in sonnet form.

I’ve always hesitated to post any of my writing online, but first world web rights be damned. I want to share this with you:

A Pyrrhic Life (Sonnet 111)

Oh what an epithet they will write for me:

Long and poetic, pleasingly engraved,

For a woman so driven for glory

That but one slow breath and she’d have been saved!

Battling life, so determined to live,

Know that I am Pyrrhus’s prodigy,

And once life’s taken all I can give,

This course of mine will certainly kill me,

But every man is likewise defeated.

So why fight till body and heart take sick,

When fair Death ever waits to be greeted,

And the only victory is pyrrhic?

Ask this of the kings for whom great men die,

For you know their names, and they know why.