Another Reason To Thank Shakespeare

Sitting in one of my favourite classes, I was encountered by the most bizarre, but necessary thing. A very influential man spoke to me and said, “thou art the grave where buried love doth live.”

For that, I thank him. I thank him because he reminded me that although I still fondly hold on to something so warm—or once was—does not mean that it is my fault it has gone cold.

In only 14 short, but incredibly dense rows of expression, he said the most profound and realistic thing that I have heard in what felt an eternity. In all the hours, days, weeks and months I have mourned such a suffocating loss from your absence, this sonnet of the 17th century has spoken more sense than any Cosmopolitan self-help article or book has since you’ve been gone.

Although our love no longer lives in us, or me—thanks to you. It still lives on within you. It lives on in you for as long as you are the grave in which you, yourself buried it—alive. It still burns and has a radiant passion but as long as it lay within your repressed soul, it will remain as cold as the walls surrounding it.

This death is no longer my burden to bear and I realize now that it probably never was. But as time has gone on, I see I carried more of your burdens that were too heavy for you and now my heart is easier to mend without the weight of your irresponsibility upon it. My life is here, within myself and no longer you. My independence has never felt brighter.

Freedom is so important. That’s something I’ve always been told and something I very much believed and lately, it’s a concept I felt my mind lacking. So I turn to this man with a look of mild disbelief and a dash of ‘what else ya got’ and he says, “And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.” There it was. Something I’m happy to say is no longer a privilege I give to you. I may not have seen it before, but I do now. I owe my future and happiness to literature and constant learning. I owe that all to myself. To think that books, and short rows of outdated language that smell of dust and look of worn ink have more impact than a living being sounds strange. It would have even sounded crazy to me maybe even a week ago but that thought was right where it needed to be in that exact moment. My soul you kept captive at your leisure is finally free too. And now you’re the prisoner,

A prisoner of my old love,

For you.

• english
• language
• love
• poetry
• shakespeare