Teach the Torches to Burn

by Caleb Roehrig

There is no Verona without Montague, and no Montague without Verona

“Sometimes I feel as though I am being crushed alive, but it’s happening so slowly, no one believes me when I tell them. Sometimes it feels like the most important parts of me are the ones I can’t share with the people who are the most important to me. Does that make any sense?” “Yes.” His voice is barely a whisper, but it echoes in the depth of the well. “When someone has decided who you are, and they won’t let you change their mind, what are you meant to do? Where is left to go?”

“I guess that’s the thing about masks … you wear one long enough, you eventually forget it isn’t your real face.”

you are in a very den of hypocrisy. Lift up any mask in this room, and you will find at least two faces lurking underneath.”

The way you acted matters more to me than why you acted.”

When he pulls back, his mouth swollen, his eyes dazed and glittering, he gasps, “Is this … is this what it’s meant to feel like?” “I don’t know.” I am unable to catch my breath. “I’ve no idea what it’s meant to feel like—but if it’s always like this, how does anyone ever stop?”

“There are far stranger things on this earth by heaven’s design than a Montague desiring a romantic liaison with someone who is not a girl. Romeo … have you never considered that perhaps you are meant to have this happiness?”

No one has ever told me I might deserve to be happy on my own terms, rather than just happy with what I’ve been given. No one has ever told me I might simply deserve to be happy.

She cuts me off, heat making her voice rough. “I have never gone anywhere outside of San Zeno without some form of an escort, and I very much long to do so. I have never had a future of my own to think of, dream of, hope for, and I should like to do all of that as well!”

“So, you see, all I am good for—all I have been raised for—is to act as a bridge between my father and some other man with something he wants.

“It is ironic, is it not? Chastity is the one virtue I should like to retain, and yet I shall be subject to public speculation about it until the moment I am married—at which point I shall be expected to give it up, whether I want to or not.”

Once again, I am flummoxed in the face of Juliet’s reality: a lack of control that so far surpasses my own it’s hard for me to comprehend. Even with my father commanding me like a puppeteer with his marionette—even with my choice of companion in his hands, my future occupation—I still had more freedom promised to me than she does.

That dowry is all I’m worth—the only money that will follow me wherever I go—and yet none of it is mine. It will only ever belong to my future husband, and I am but the useless chest in which it travels.”

But it surprises me to know how many of us there seem to be who do not feel things we’ve been told are conventional and innate—that perhaps what is innate is much more complex than I ever dreamed.

“We do not always get to choose the future—sometimes the future simply happens, and we may only choose how we will live with it.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I have no idea what the future will bring, because I’ve not decided it yet. Instead, I choose to float in this happiness, and to imagine all the possibilities that lie ahead—for they are as boundless as the sea.

it is, at its core, the story of two young people who are so neglected and manipulated by their selfish, self-involved parents that their lives end in senseless and avoidable tragedy. It is a wake-up call, meant to remind us that life is short and love is precious, and that we disrespect our children’s self-determination at great peril to their safety—as well as to our own happiness and moral welfare. It is a message that I think contemporary society could benefit from.

A story about queer people snatching happiness from the jaws of a world that has been fashioned against them. A tale as old as time. As the shadows deepen, and old ugliness awakes to shake its loathsome head against the peace we’ve fought long and hard for, remember this: We cannot be corrected or contained. We are as boundless as the sea, and we will teach the torches to burn bright.