A Question of Passing

Why didn’t I die
in birth
a miscarriage or
victim of a surgeon’s slip
never given a chance to cry?

Why didn’t I die
crushed
under the rubble of the home
I grew up in
learned to be a man in
watched my parents vanish in?

Why didn’t I die
alone
in a studio apartment
discovered weeks later
revealed by decomposition?

So many others before me
have gone these ways.

2023.09.05 – 2023.12.03