I am lucky, people tell me so
lucky my eyes can watch the daylight glow,
lucky to wrinkle up my nose at food
while somewhere hunger darkens every mood.
I’m lucky I can sleep inside a bed,
lucky no bombs are ringing overhead,
lucky to walk to school and home again
while other children vanish now and then.
I’m lucky I complain when days feel long,
lucky my body mostly stays strong,
lucky the streets I walk are mostly safe,
lucky the world has left me some small space.
They say: remember this, be grateful, see
so many lives are harder than your own,
so many children never get to be
the age I am, the life that I have known.
And yes, I see it plainly, every day:
the news, the stories drifting through the air,
a thousand worlds that feel so far away
where loss and hunger settle in despair.
But calling it “just luck” feels somehow wrong.
Like life’s a raffle spinning in the sky,
like safety’s just a prize for staying strong
while others simply drew a losing try.
Because the truth is heavier than that:
the scales were never balanced to begin,
some people feast while others fight for scraps,
some doors are locked before you enter in.
The rich grow richer, higher than the clouds,
they laugh and toss their coins in golden streams,
while crowded cities, villages, and towns
are stitched with quiet hunger in the seams.
The world is not a table set for all,
it’s tilted hard beneath unequal weight
some stand on marble floors in shining halls
while others knock on rusted iron gates.
So yes, I know I’m fortunate in ways
my life has given me a gentler start
but fortune isn’t something that explains
the crooked architecture of the heart.
It shouldn’t take good luck to go to school
and know the door will open when I’m through.
It shouldn’t take a miracle or rule
that I come home the way I always do.
It shouldn’t take good fortune just to say
the street I walk won’t turn into a threat.
It shouldn’t be a blessing that one day
my body hasn’t met a stranger’s debt.
So maybe I am lucky, yes, it’s true
my life has spared me more than it has scarred
but luck is not the whole or honest view.
The truth is simply this:
the world is hard.