What Was My Choice? Poem by Fawzi Karim

One has learned to allow a tiny space in the head for contingency.
Yet, losses befall suddenly
- of the river and the date palms that used to balance
of the friends circling your glass like a crescent.
Then you in one moment peel yourself of whom you love
and alone, dim-sighted, grope your way home,
the light of the street lamps heavier than darkness
the burden of exile than in memory.
Tantalizing ourselves with hope
shielding ourselves against…but the question in the middle
of exiles suddenly attacks:
- What have you chosen?
No longer trusting ourselves
about to desert the self,
annihilated in God's self,
or prefer to watch, like a trap,
the tripwires of another.