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
