…If I had been born a girl,
would I put myself through the pain of later life
or given in to this drill like resonance that courses
through my spine, like a jack hammer gone mad
and which turns my sick to bile and my thoughts
to a looping insanity…
If I had been born a girl…
I would hope I would have even more compassion
than I hopefully am in possession of now,
and be able to forgive even those that are unforgivable in their actions
and I hope I would have the courage to forgive myself
of all…if I had been born a girl…the bile would be less bitter.
If I muse on having been born with the ability to turn heads
would that amuse me or would I find it bemusing as when
I was told I was a good bit of rough by a girl in a New York apartment.
If that confused me then, to the point of being in a daze for a night
and a rain filled day, my company in the rough, several short whiskies,
would I have drank myself to near oblivion one night in May twenty
years later…If I had been born a girl…
I hope I wouldn’t have given a stuff about the price of fashion,
more concerned for the world we were in and made my way to
more campaigns and willing to take different risks in the name of justice,
if I had been born a girl.
Having been born a girl, would though I have hitch-hiked through France
in the summer of ’93, lain in layby fast asleep without a care
in the world, tried to save a young lad’s life, stopped the night
on a rusted bench in the
wind and rain as the cold dipped over the Niagara horizon
and allowed myself to be homeless just to get away from the edge of destruction.
Would I have been a better fighter, for that I do not do in this time?
Would I contemplate giving in,
would the knife never reach my spineless hands
would I be stronger than that?
Would I have understood that I cannot understand
or is that inherent regardless and in the end would
I have made a better specimen of humanity,
not one filled with masculine stupid ego, be it tiny and insignificant;
if I had been born a girl?
Ian D. Hall 2015