a man and two children holding hands in front of a tree

In another world I want to be a father without passing through the eternal insanity of mourning my children, without experiencing the ritual of watching them return home as bodies folded like a prayer mat, without spending my nights telling my children stories where natives become aliens searching for shelter. I want to watch them grow to recite the name of their homeland and pray without fear, minding their children the stories of a home where they met home without being like Lord's Prayer in the streets without being united like animals in the bush, without being mobbed to death in another world, my children to tame grasshoppers in the field, to play with their dolls in the living room, to inhale the fragrance of flowers waving as wind blows, to see the birds measure the sky with their wings.