The Future in 125 Directions

Written by Dr Afra Atiq

The future moves in 125 different directions and possibilities,

each flowing like conversations,

widening space in the margins for everything

that can be imagined and dreamed.

A poem meets cadence

in unexpected texture and metaphor.

Stanzas with ink still to dry on uncharted routes

becoming both map and compass,

navigation and instinct.

The cartography of what we know

sits unpolished and unfinished,

because learning happens at a combination.

Latitude of courage and longitude of ideas

drawn and redrawn, again and again,

each revision creating a new horizon.

A wrong turn into a thermodynamics lecture,

mistaken for first year orientation,

leads to a friendship that lasts well beyond degree years.

A conversation after literary club

becomes traded stories and collectively penned poems,

beyond a quiet corner in the library.

The familiar ways students gather at the steps,

because everyone meets at the steps.

Moments of gathering understanding, points of view,

and what gets carried into the next steps.

The future moves in one hundred and twenty-five different directions.

In some ways, these directions converged here.

And somewhere on those unfinished pages,

something shifts into the unpredicted.

A bend in perspective, a tiny detour, a growing of questions, a turning point.

Ideas becoming bolder and brilliant,

enough to illuminate what is still to come.

A future, in 125 different directions and possibilities.