As the slip of paper emerges from the cracked cookie
My eyes focus on words that can only be
Someone else’s fortune

The words may have fitted any number of the possible lives I’ve grieved
Sure, they are supposed to be generic enough to fit many lives
But the particularity of my experiences transgresses the boundaries
Of Someone else’s fortune

This simple sentence of a throw away piece of paper
Becomes a mental pathway to the present that never was to be
To dreams stillborn and paths that receded into the past
An invitation to rumination upon hopes I thought long buried
Of the someone else that those paths would have created
If this wasn’t someone else’s fortune, but mine