Had I been born a different fate,
I might not have looked upon a library as one does the Seven Wonders of the World,
might not have reveled in the luxuries of literature.
A pen would have been just a tool with ink, not a magic wand that creates,
that puts wishes onto pages, that mingles words together and makes them play.
The power of a pen might have been unknown to me.

Had I been born in a different place,
Freedom might have been just a vision in the distance,
like a dream I had to chase, a desperate race to the finish line,
a brutal fight, a struggle all my life.
Freedom might have slapped my hand instead of shaken it,
might have averted it’s glance instead of smiling into my eyes.
Freedom might not have been mine.

If I had been born a different kind,
I might have shown my faith by concealing my face beneath a veil,
or felt the weight of His presence through the lessons of the bible,
instead of the tales told by the Torah.
My beliefs might have been given to me instead of chosen by me,
Forced upon me like a label, branding my skin, defining the character, the soul that hid within.
No, Religion is not meant to imprison one’s life, to cause division of minds,
or collision of mankind. It’s just an individual right that we all possess, not a reason
to point fingers, like guns to a chest.

If I had been born to a different home,
Loneliness might have lived alongside me like a room-mate I could not escape,
a shadow that carved a caliginous cave
inside the caverns of my heart.
I might never have understood the language of praise,
might not have known the comfort of a warm embrace.
‘Family dinners’ might have been a foreign phrase
that tasted unfamiliar to my tongue.
I might never have seen that childhood is not meant to be clean,
but a place where flour-covered faces make sense,
and mothers don’t fuss over messes made as long as memories are made along with them.

A whole world I would have missed
had been born a different fate.