"What If?"

Oh, my boys,
the "What If?'s" are hard to shake.
Like waves, they just keep washing up, to the shore of my consciousness.
I try to lull myself to sleep, in the hull of the ship on this sea,
in the comfort of the here and now,
but they are endless.
Despite our best efforts to live in the moment,
and regardless of our intentions to live for the future,
the past is still right there behind us.

The "What If?'s"
Omnipresent,
fuzzy around the periphery.
The thick dusty grime, the dirty hot sun, the air thick with burning rubber,
in Cite Soleil.
The distended bellies, like rocks, sitting between your spine and my hip.
I pull you closer and I try to push it away,
but it --like Haiti-- is always there.

We have to move forward, we have to be free, but still, there they are.
They happen in the smallest of moments.
And in the most profound.
I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head
intentionally to shake them away.
It is too much to ponder.
The "What If?'s"

It is completely surreal.
But it is real.
It is in the little things --
the giddy grin I see when you first put on a pair of brand new shoes;
the arms outstretched in utter security when you lay there asleep in your bed;
the look of concentration as you wind your way through the maze.

Oh, my boys,
you would never have had those shoes,
that security,
that space in your mind for pencils and Saturday morning moments.
Oh, my boys,
I cannot even think it,
how different the mazes would have been.

Oh, my babies,
it shakes me to the core.
The "What If?'s"
and the tremendous juxtapositions
of what is and what might have been.
And the truth of what will never be for
oh so many.