Everyday Poems

If you could, Sletvana
Or Anastasia
In your sad repose
Live again
Would you breath
The same acrid mortor air
Walk the same fateful path

With its unbearable grief
Would you
sacrifice yourself
Your dreams
For your beloved country
For a  better future, that
You will never see

An abstract ideal
To many, but
A burning duty, an imperative
For you,
Still barely a child
Did you imagine this end
At only 22

How sad then, that
You never claimed your diploma
Married your love
Raised your child
Or just
Lived life’s drama to the end

What future might you have had
In all its rich uncertainty
If only life had dealt a different hand
Maybe
A scientist, a mother
or both
You will never know