Oh first week three-day weekend,
I repent for those years that I wished you had come at another time. I implore you to forgive me, for the truth is I need you. I desire you like I desire little else in the world. This truth was revealed to me when last semester you delayed your arrival by a week. When you did not come that first week, I yearned for you like one might yearn for bacon at vegan camp.
The moles that burrow through the earth must have pitied my blindness for I could not see how beautiful you were. A beached fish would have scorned by ignorance for I did not know how much I needed you. But fate conspired to instruct me. It withheld you for a time and for that dark season I became the most wretched man upon this mortal plane, for I lacked you. You who were my light of hope in dark days, my sure rock in stormy seas, my true companion, your absence was like a chasm in my gut, a wound so deep and wide that the fall breezes might have blown through me and whistled.
For when I need you, you are there to restore me. When the first week of classes crashes upon me like the wine-dark seas you catch me and bring me safe to shore. You whispered calming spells like a mother to her babe. You soothe my fears and assure me, in those moments when I am sure the semester will bring me down, that I will survive. You give me new life to face the semester, not in strong ignorance like I had a week ago, but in brave recognition of the battles that lie before me.
Once I had wished that you would come later to give me rest in the midst of the semester, but you knew that I would not survive if you came later. Once I wished that you would be slower in coming to afford a modicum of respite before the most treacherous midterm clashes, but you knew that I would not make fullest use of you. Once I wished that you might align with some other holiday, like the feast of Saint Valentine, but you knew that you were supposed to be my one true love.
Oh, do not forsake me again. Do not slow your arrival a second time, for the delay would surely kill me. Nor, I implore, hasten to arrive. In deed, in your wisdom arrive when you determine I am most in need, three day weekend: the first week of every semester.
Though, my dearest, my love, would you but listen to my one humble request, do not hide your rapturous face from me, nor make thyself scarce to be found; visit me more often and soothe me from my exertions and take away my academic woes.
With unending love,
Steven Buchele