Day 1,050

What would you be doing now,
you wonder, if the genocide
hadn’t happened? If your parents,
brothers, grandparents
hadn’t been killed? Your friends
not slaughtered? Your professors
not assassinated? What
would you be studying? Who
would be going to classes
with you? What boulevards
would you walk, under what
trees, alongside which
shops, cafés, libraries?
You stand on the hill of rubble
where your house once stood,
look out at the city
you lived in, try to find
one landmark, one view
you can recognize. What
would you be doing
this year, this month,
this moment? If not
standing on the ruins
of your twenty-year-old life,
imagining everything restored?
Imagining what part you will take
in the restoration?