a little poetry on the side.

That Could Have Been Us

[What I've learned from Manila]

I saw a boy today,

who had no shoes.

The rain had begun to fall

and the mud began to rise up.

He walked through the streets--

with a metal rod as his scepter,

A broken piece from one of the broken buildings

That he claimed as his home.

He wore no shirt,
no shoes,

shorts that frayed at the seams,

and a smile, bigger and more genuine

than anyone would suspect.

The truth?

Most would have lost their smile long ago,

if they were forced to wade

through the circumstances of his.

But,

He knows of nothing else

than the life of which he leads.

In the squalor and the slums

Of a city where it's too hot,

too old,

and often times
too dangerous to tread alone.

He's never been to a place--

where the furniture is clean,

where it is warm and inviting,

sheltered from the rain.

He knows that such pleasures exist,

but exist in his world?

It's only a dream.

A dream that is my reality

While his reality would be my nightmare.

He wouldn't look at me and my life,

And muse that I could have been him

In another place,

another time,

If God had decided to write a different plan...

But as I looked at him,

Offering out his hand for spare change--

and leaping for joy at the 30 pesos
we pressed into his palm

I know, given the place,

given the time

given if God had written a different plan

He could have very well...

been me.