(Dear Assemblers of the Daily Prompt: why do you hate me? – Sincerely, Owen)

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Daily Prompt: “Out of Reach” – Write about the one X that got away — a person, an experience, a place you wanted to visit. How much would you change about your life to have it within reach again?

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I do these daily prompts
Because they’re fun —
But now, I’m stumped:
What all have I not done?

Of love, yes, I’ve had missteps
And misfires;
And held close disappointments
Many years

But finally found some peace
Amid the pain,
And grew a healthy flower
From my tears

And things I longed to do
I mostly did;
So long as they were really
Up to me

(I never got into
The NBA;
Nor learned how I could
Ever handsome be)

And I have traveled long
And very far:
I cannot think of any
Earthly place

I wish that I had gone,
But never went.
Of course, there’s always
Trips to outer space —

So where’s “the one” that got away?
It might have been at Princeton —
I had been there accepted, ere
Disease took that away

But I cannot rue that; it’s part
Of my ongoing journey —
And so, I’m left at last to
Look around and merely say

What got-away’s the fate of many men:
Never to be the father that
I should have been