It didn’t have to go this way

The end of the story was right in your palms
You, yes! could have sculpted a better figure
By now we’d be singing happy hymns and psalms

You should have exchanged your weakness for vigor
Your past for the future. Less seizures, for me,
For us, mother, you could have less this rigor

For the pain we feel, and the troubles we see
The path we walk, the thorns underneath our feet
For all the things we are that we should not be

Here, we stand upon the place we ought to sit,
You threw away gold, for ashes like father
Mother, we’d have been royalties, whose crowns fit

If only you married that poor man later,
Who’s now the king. I’m pondering. I wonder.

Tochi