When it's over,
I want to say:
all my life
I was a bride
married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom,
taking the world into my arms.
When it is over,
I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life
something particular,
and real.
I don't want to find myself
sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply
having visited
this world.
— Mary Oliver, When Death Comes
