Life in a Letter

Dear Watcharin,

We weren’t ever supposed to meet.

I was supposed to go to the same school as all my friends from high school, 45 minutes away from my hometown. I was supposed to bounce between majors for a couple years until I settled on something my parents and I could agree on.

But I didn’t get accepted.

I think I’ve always been the type of person to run away from their problems instead of facing them. That’s what I did when I got the rejection letter.

“Thank you for your application but…”

“We appreciate your interest in our school but…”

“We wish you the best of luck on your…”

Empty words sent to me and a thousand other kids who couldn’t hack it. Empty words that had me applying to a youth exchange program just so I could get as far away as humanly possible from my own failures.

Your hometown is 8,078 miles away from the school I was supposed to go to. 8,078 miles away from where I was supposed to be.

Before I arrived here, I made my decisions based off of what would be best in the long run. I learned Spanish for local employment opportunities. I started to study Chinese for the global employment opportunities.

Frankly, Thai never interested me. I thought there was no point for me to learn a language that was almost exclusively spoken in one country.

But from the very first day I met you, it became the most important language in the world.

I wasn’t supposed to learn Thai. I wasn’t supposed to come to Thailand. I wasn’t supposed to meet you.

But I did.

And as the expiration date on my time in your country stalks closer and closer I’m realizing that for the first time in my life I don’t want to leave.

Maybe that’s just the cruel irony of the whole thing. The one place that I can’t stay is the only place I want to.

Love,

Tohnsak

This poem is about: 
Me
My community
Our world
Poetry Terms Demonstrated: 

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