What If We Were Not

• Alice Robinson, Grade 10, Stuartholme School
• Poetry
• 2012

Excellence Award in the 'Legendary 2012' competition

Have you ever thought where we would be even if we had never been?
If the lights turned out and all went black; no trace of life ever to be seen?
Some believe that after death, heaven’s next in line.
But how can we die if we never lived? Our ideas just seem benign.
What if we couldn’t leave because we never arrived?
Of what we are and how we be; our knowledge has been deprived.
Then you’ll think well what is ‘we’ if ‘I’ does not exist?
There can’t be a plural of what is not; no matter how much you persist.
The thought of us now working and studying, it baffles me quite a lot.
From now on I shall always consider: what if we were not?