Genes

I found a crying child, lost and forlorn,

In broken brown shoes and tattered old clothes

Like a plastic bag floating down long roads.

He’s the child who should have never been born.

His parents look at him, eyes filled with scorn:

The color of his hair, shape of his nose,

Are the qualities they wished to dispose

Of while he was still unformed—an unborn.

He is who he is, he can’t be reborn

His genes are his forever, can’t be changed.

Love pieced together what has now been torn,

It’d be better if he had stayed unborn.

His colors, his shapes, were all prearranged

By a force of life that can’t be estranged.