If this were

Another life

I wouldn’t know

or even care

to tell the difference,

though rest assured

I’d still wonder—

how the body wakes itself up

just before the alarm kills silence, or

how’s the mind can handle

such a cellophane history of pain and violence—

how lucky it would be

to be somebody richer,

whose price I’d have to pay

whose suffering I’d deal

regardless of my efforts

in this one.