a young boy walking down a dirt path with birds flying around him

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 my children return home as bodies folded like a prayer mat, without spending my nights telling them the stories of a hometown where natives become aliens searching for a shelter. I want my children to spread a mat outside my house and play without the walls of houses ripped by rifles. I want to watch my children grow to recite the name of their homeland like Lord’s Prayer, to frolic in the streets without being hunted like animals in the bush, without being mobbed to death. In another world I want 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.