An Elegy for Future Consideration

I often wonder what
Legacy I will leave behind
Will the flowers that I lay down be returned in kind?

So, preemptively,
To whomsoever it may concern,
For when I, to the ground, return
Here is my elegy:

I am sixteen, as of writing this,
So forgive me if some things I say
are incorrect.

If everything went according to my wildest dreams,
I’d have a nice house
With a lot of comfy chairs
And maybe I’d be famous
Or famous to a few people
I’d make Big Creative Projects
(though what they are I couldn’t tell you).

Maybe I should pivot.

Truth be told, I have no idea where my life is headed.
I don’t even know where it is right now.
Or maybe it’s just me.
Maybe it’s just that I’m being propelled by inertia out of a cave
Out of Plato’s cave, where the shadows on the wall
Are all I’ve ever known
But reality is out of reach and beyond my wildest imagination
Everything feels so real and concrete all the time, though
And the everythings are piling up now, in great big stacks.

I wonder what it’s like to be an adult;
To be an independent person.
To be able to go places and do things
Without telling an army of people where you are
(not that I remember to do that, anyway).

Time is funny like that.
Two completely different stages of life
Two completely different realms of responsibility
But if you were to fill a survey for customer satisfaction,
The result would be the same.

Do humans ever reach Aristotle’s eudaemonia?
That state of quietly encompassing flourishing?
Did I?
I hope I did.
I hope that I did right by my time here.
And, even if it’s selfish,
I hope that the pews at my funeral are full.
I hope I loved, and was loved.
I hope I didn’t get arthritis from all the knitting.
I hope I told stories
Or, at least, one singularly important story.

I hope you don’t feel sad on my account.
And, you’ll forgive the morbid train of thought here-
We are at a funeral, of course-
But in the grand scale of things,
Non-subjectively speaking,
Nobody is ever very far off from joining me here.
And I don’t mean to imply that your days are numbered-
Nothing so menacing as that.

Only,
I remember in third grade
(If I can’t look to the future, into the past I shall go)
In third grade,
We studied a unit on the origins of things
The general consensus was that
‘Everything returns to the Earth.’
So I think life is like a field trip.
Temporary, but isn’t it so fun when it happens?
And then, you’ll come and join me in the dirt.
And you’ll tell me all that happened when you were away
And I’ll offer you dirt tea
And it’ll be disgusting
And probably have worms in it
But we will smile.

I often wonder what
Legacy I will leave behind.
And I wonder, does it match up to what I’ve just said to you?
Does this elegy feel like I wrote it?
How have I changed and been changed?

Therefore, dear future audience, I leave it up to you.
Take it or leave it-
This is my own elegy, for your consideration.