Life is Beautiful

Content warning for sensitive content (nondescript mentions of self harm)

Life is Beautiful

by Alexis, Grade 11

To Luna

Life is beautiful. I know this is true

because I’ve seen a thousand scars

deliberately carved onto your wrists, like how

a thousand roads, forever, lead men to Rome.

Life is beautiful. Kids would doodle

with pencils clutched in tight-clenched fists,

lines and curves streaming, their sketchbooks

unconsciously creating mathematical

parabolae, hyperbolae, formulae,

mapping the countless colourful capillaries

underneath your skin, freckles on your cheeks

are stars, endlessly morphing into constellations.

Behold, we need not venture; at ille ne adpropies

inquit huc solve calciamentum de pedibus tuis

locus enim in quo stas terra sancta est;

and how very blessed we are, gladly

breathing, living on and on, the Earth madly

spinning, round and round and on and on, and

Life is beautiful. Sic, vita mihi pulchra est,

because you are beautiful; the graceful span

of rainbows, between you and I and earth to sky –

arc lengths of a covenanted happiness index,

numbers teaching you numeric blessings –

the innumerability of mathematical proofs

that cannot be proven to us, lest we pray

to omnipresent gods, God and beyond,

every day I look up to your eyes and think:

Life is beautiful. I know this is true.

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Winter 2024

LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We wish to acknowledge this land on which Branksome operates. For thousands of years, it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous peoples from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work and go to school on this land.