Life is Random

NaPoWriMo day 29 I went off-brief for the first time.

Life is random
Maybe you forget that you were born wild
And made the sounds of a beast
Before you were tamed

Maybe you forget that you live stuck to a rock
Flying through space
As space expands before us
With no risk of falling off
Tell me what’s not random about that?

Life is random
Your dad will die when you’re still at school
You’ll have miscarriage after miscarriage
You’ll have malaria, a brain haemorrhage,
A relentless sadness that keeps coming back
And loneliness even when you’re with people
Sometimes, especially when you’re with people
Because life is random

You will change jobs, lose jobs, go on the dole,
Get a new job. Take time off sick.

Your son will die and you’ll have to stop work
Because you’ve started sleep driving
And your friends will all come and clean your house
And it wasn’t even dirty

Someone you know will kill themself and you’ll wish you’d done more
Then the news will come that you have a rare form of cancer
Which means you’ll lose your voice while your children are still young
And your brother will die and he was your best friend.
And this is life
It is random.

You’ll be there when a baby is born
New hope, reminding you that life goes on after you
Saying that you are a grown up now
You have something to pass on

You will be loved
The moments your children are safely asleep upstairs
You will treasure for ever
You will squeal with delight when your seedlings push through the soil
And every new sweet pea will bring you a smile
They will bloom until January
Because life is random

You will bump into a friend you’ve been thinking about
Who you haven’t seen for years
You will hug and swap details and smile a lot
You will dance and cry and laugh and seduce
Or maybe you will be seduced
And you will enjoy the success of your loved ones
In some ways much more than your own success

You will find a wave of happiness sweep over you at the strangest of times
And look for a reason
But sometimes it is simply because life is random

It is easy to forget the randomness of life
When things tick along for so long
But it only takes one thing to remind us again
Just how random life is
Because we know deep down it is true

After all, we are borne from randomness
A tadpole, headbutting an egg
Then fusing with the egg and dividing and dividing until there’s a little human
Growing inside another human
Who had a high chance of dying in the process of getting the little human out
Back in the day

So yes, life is random
That is one thing you can be sure of
Did you forget?