The Roll of the Die

Don’t you dare tell me that something is impossible While the fact that I am talking to you today is improbable. I am the product Of a lucky hand in a game of duds. Where the statistics Of me being nine feet under Are far greater than me being miles above The world that I grew up in Was a die thrown in the air Roll a one and my parents Never made it out of there Roll a two and see That my parents could have never made it To Germany Roll a three and realize That even if they made it out alive You could see the targets in their eyes Roll a four and notice That the Germans didn’t want us Roll five and know That we had to go Roll six and thank the stars We had been accepted to the Americas Yet this ride was far from over Because Americans put their refugees on roller coasters The kindness they might have shown Is now completely gone once we’re in their home. Learn to read, learn to write And while you’re at it, Make sure your poverty is out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind We’re truly not one of their kind No if we were they’d offer us a hand Make sure we had a better out look of man Yet once we had made it we were on our own With a one bedroom apartment filled with cockroaches And mold to call our home. But this was our spark, this was our chance We could make it out alive As long as we learned their dance. As long as we moved like they did We could thrive in the world they created All it would cost us was Our blood, our sweat, and our identities For Bosnians aren’t American beings And if we choose our culture over theirs The chance that we could make it here are A lot less than scarce As a young child of three My parents made the choice for me They picked up the die and forced it Onto six Despite my cries and despite my tricks I became an American Bosnian mix Now this die is in my hands And though maybe everything I want Is really up to chance It seems like the die rolls in my favor So let me just savor Being able to throw the die into the air And know that there is no such thing as impossible Only improbable.