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It’s not like playing the lotto

where you can scratch away the black

and there you are holding a winning ticket.

It’s not like that at all.

The censure is indelible.

Words, lines, whole passages

are blotted out.

These are the instructions, you might say,

we were given when we enter this life.

They are incomplete, at best.

More like a riddle than a key.

Hints followed by guesses.

With so much missing 

from the “playbook” of life,

so much veiled from view,

it would be easy to want to redact ourselves,

to find ways to ink over

all the anxiety and dis-ease that

not knowing brings.

What would be the point in that, though?

It would only further confuse the issue

and make the message even more obscure,

harder to read and decipher.

Why stain the pages of our life

with even more black?

Better to accept the handbook as is,

let it pique our curiosity,

overwrite it with our own answers,

and decide our future and fortunes

our own damn selves.