What if we lived our lives backward?
Birth through bombs and bullets;
At the end of the fight, no one wins,
Both run away. Anger and hate recede
With time. When you can again love your brother,
You get your mother back.
Each day you strip and step into the shower,
Scrub the dirt into your skin.
As the day wears on, you grow
Cleaner. You must capture the shampoo lather,
Compress it into gel;
In ten weeks you will fill the bottle,
Trade it for seven dollars and sixty-eight cents.
Money waxes and wanes as it always has;
Soon you must pay your boss,
For the honor a month’s work.
In the morning—which was once a night,
But how can you tell dawn from inverted dusk?—
You lie in bed and
Un-read your favorite book.
The villain is born through a bullet,
And the hero runs away to end up
A powerless orphan babe.
Soon you too must crawl back into the womb,
Body ever dwindling,
Until egg expels sperm,
Imparting your DNA to—
Who are they now? Your parents?
Your children?
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