Elissa Oeschler, Senior Theatre Design and Technology major and an English minor from Houston, TX.
This is the only life I will ever live.
I will never feel the warmth of a different sun
or lead a Royal Army on a quest through an enchanted wood.
I cannot pee standing up without making a mess
and I do not know what it’s like to grow up as an orphan.
There are just some things I am not equipped to understand;
I will never feel the warmth of a different sun
or lead a Royal Army on a quest through an enchanted wood.
I cannot pee standing up without making a mess
and I do not know what it’s like to grow up as an orphan.
There are just some things I am not equipped to understand;
Not the kind of understanding
where you try to think about what others have lived,
but the kind of understanding when you too have lived fatherless,
you too have lived as a boy and not as a son.
I did not have to teach myself how to shave and clean up my mess.
If I could understand, I would.
Or, perhaps, I wouldn’t. It is safe to say that I would
when I can’t always change what I do not understand.
There are so many things that I miss
about a life I can never live.
I will never teach my son
how to be king in a kingdom full of the faithless
or sail the open seas with a pirate crew full of the unfaithful.
How am I supposed to stay content in this life when I would
kill to spend my days on horseback just trying to outrun the sun.
Yet I am told I cannot love what I do not understand.So tell me, how should I live
when I grieve for all the lives that I will miss?
Instead, I must continue to respond to “miss”
and “young lady” and try not to be ungrateful
for the life I have been given to live.
I will try, instead, to remember the feeling I get when I walk into the Woods
and the trees tell me They hear me, and They understand.
They will shield me from the sun.
I will try not to think about the fact that the sun
is the same one I see every day and it’s unlikely I will meet another. I will not mess
with things I cannot understand.
I will train myself to be grateful
and content with what I have, instead of dreaming of what I would
if I could live more lives.
There is nothing I can do about not understanding a fatherless son
in the way that I understand a girl speaking to the woods.
What a mess each of our lives is, and yet I long for more messes.
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