what if i were born in the south, and low rent meant not brown floors and no windows but small rooms with high ceilings, real plaster walls cracked and smoke-stained, littered with fragments of once optimistic wallpaper? what if poverty had been romantic and hopeless instead of common and hopeless?

what if i were born far too rich and the only joy in my life was the pursuit of decadence, morality having been shown long ago to be a yoke worn by other people, never me and mine? what if rebellion was subsidized and i grew to be a failed perfectionist in spite of it?

what if i were born a boy and no one ever chastised me for wanting to brood all alone? what if no one judged me by my trespasses, even encouraged them as what they were - the accumulation of experiences?

what if i were born in an older world and i saw my face in every building i passed and it was impossible for me to be too hip for tradition? what if i was born of a people who knew how to keep their secrets? what if i were part of a place whose myths weren't manufactured?

what if i were born in a past where women kept to the inside and left men to dominate the outside, and i died young and never thought to question?