Conversations With Sophie

We share a birthday, you and I
Do we share feelings, thoughts as well?
I feel pretentious saying that
I think there’s a connection
Spanning those sixty-three years
Yet I talk to you sometimes, as if
You were here, seeing through my eyes

If you were me
What would you see – is there a difference
In perception?
If I were you,
I would have died a year ago

We share beliefs, I know that now
In what is right,
But who am I to talk? My land is free
And yours was not -
One and the same

I can’t say I would be as brave
As you, I’ll never know
I might have kept my head down
Ignorant, I might have vanished
In the crowd
But you stood out

And though I cannot do you justice
Through a poem, let me try
To put these feelings into words
You’ve touched me just by your existence
By your death, but also
By your birth

By standing up, and shouting
And by calling for humanity
And justice, and by loving
Your own country more than
It loved you, by being willing
To let go of your own life

By raining paper onto steps
Like cleansing snow, and
Getting caught for speaking freely
In a world were it was sin
To have a mind like yours

And know that you won’t be forgotten