Twenty Years Later: A Cynical Musical Interlude

The Bangles “An Eternal Flame”, their biggest hit, released in 1988:


By 2008, the poet-narrator’s “eternal flame,” whom she married in 1990, has left her after succeeding at his career (success being a district manager in a repair-shop-directed auto parts chain) for a 24-year-old whom he met at a coffeeshop in Indianapolis, IN, during a national sales meeting and who “rocked his world.” In 2008, our poet-narrator has been single for 6 years and has begun dealing with empty-nest syndrome as the only child from her “eternal flame” relationship (born ahead of the marriage) has left to go to school in San Francisco.

She’s got nothing left, just a mother nearby who has given up trying to console her daughter and a couple of people whom she calls every couple of months, trying not to impose upon them but ultimately proving too morbid for a return to their early friendship, which she sacrificed to her husbands’ interests (now, they’re married and raising children and don’t want to relate to her experience).

Pleasant dreams.

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