Sometimes she wonders

She wonders about life would be like

If she had been born

In a different time

Would she be carefree

A young girl

Exploring the wonders of nature

Running around in flower fields

Marveling at the colors

Of a butterfly's wing

Or perhaps

She would be a musician

With shiny black shoes

And bows in her hair

Letting the crescendo of her notes

Break over her like a wave

All the time she wondered

She imagined

She saw

She saw herself happy

Innocent

Unmarred by the terror of war

And the expectations

Of a lady of proper blood

She saw herself whole again

Not as she was now

The misshapen shards

Of a shattered girl

That grew into a shattered woman

She doesn't just see herself as a child

Sometimes she imagines

She married someone else

A person who was whole

Instead of the even more broken man

She married

With the hope that

Two wrongs equaled a right

A sin wasn't a sin if no one caught you

And two broken things would make a whole

She was wrong and so she was stuck

Imagining that she had found someone

Who would fix her

Instead of breaking her even more

Maybe she married an artist

Who taught her to paint

And how to mend

Or maybe she married a shopkeeper

Who let her sit at the register

And she would learn how to smile again

By looking at the faces of all the happy customers

Who she made happy

There was one thing that never changed

No matter what she imagined

Her son

Her precious, darling son

Was always the same

Because she could not imagine

Any change that would make him better

Than he already was