Look like th' innocent flower, But be the serpent under ’t. —Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, Act I, Scene V, by William Shakespeare Again tonight Macbeth kills Duncan, stabs him in his sleep as he has done for four hundred twenty-five years, as he’s destined to do for how many hundreds of years more, never able to break from what’s been written, ever a victim of his flaws. As I walk away from the blood-stained stage into the warm night, I notice how with every step across the damp grass my story is still being written, notice how unfinished I am— a flawed human yet in service to the human I will become. Praise the power to evolve, the chance to choose to be flower and not the snake beneath it. Praise the power to walk away from the script, to walk away from prophesy, to walk into the next scene as it comes. Praise the chance to change, to transform, to turn while the candle, though brief, still burns.