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Out of Africa

Karen: “When you go away …

you don’t always go on safari, do you?

 Just want to be away.”

Denys: “It’s not meant to hurt you.”

Karen: “It does.”

Denys: “I’m with you because I choose to be with you.

I don’t want to live someone else’s idea of how to live.

Don’t ask me to do that.

I don’t want to find out one day that I’m at the end of someone else’s life.

I’m willing to pay for mine.

To be lonely sometimes.

To die alone, if I have to.

I think that’s fair.”

Karen: “Not quite.

You want me to pay for it as well.”

Denys: “No, you have a choice,

and you’re not willing to do the same

for me.”

Robert Redford (Aug. 18, 1936 – Sept. 16, 2025)

Published inPoetry