another suburbia scrolled past me at thirty-five miles per hour

and I thought about another life that could have been,
neither better nor worse.

a different view from my bedroom
a veranda, windowsill flora

a rearranged daily routine, dietary habits, wardrobe,
sketchbooks, tree types, traffic patterns, color spectra,
a transfigured cityscape silhouette at dusk

rewritten histories: school, ambition, degree, career,
friends, community, new family additions,
chain-linked decisions, wings and hurricanes,
our accumulated choices leading us here, now,
a path that self-effaces yet still holds
the potential to split off, branch out, blossom
like colonies of blood vessels sprawling out toward unseen ends

whether these would have been enough
to change even this skeletal framework, this face,
these rhythms hormonal, circadian, cyclothymic

and if you transplanted all of these,
everything physical and immaterial
transient and permanent,
one or some or all at a time,
would a new individual
be
built?