Written by SANAZ SHOBIKEH
Perhaps the world had written this road before my birth,
A hidden map beneath the restless skin of earth.
Perhaps the stars had numbered every fall and flight,
And carved my little choices into the ribs of night.
The moon may know the ending; the river knows the sea,
Yet every bend it takes looks strangely wild to me.
If all our steps are written, every wound and every kiss,
Why does the heart still tremble at the edge of “this?”
Am I a piece upon a board, moved by a hand unseen,
Or am I the hand itself, inventing what has been?
Does fate pull every thread before I learn to choose,
Or do my hands, by choosing, give the threads their hues?
Perhaps the two are lovers in a language without sound:
Fate draws the borders; choice decides the ground.
Perhaps each “must” contains a door we never knew was there,
And every “I will” bends a universe somewhere.
Maybe freedom is not breaking every chain,
But choosing how to dance while wearing what remains.
And maybe fate is not a script we simply travel through,
But ink that waits, half-written, for the pressure of the “you.”
So if the universe whispers,
“You were always meant to be,”
I’ll answer, “Then who taught fate
to leave a choice in me?”
And if tomorrow waits
with a page still clean and white,
Perhaps fate may hold the pen—
but I decide what I write.
.
SANAZ SHOBIKEH (pen name: NIVA NIK), is a poet, playwright, fiction writer, and visual artist based in Shiraz, Iran, and works at Shiraz University. Moving between poetry, fiction, screenwriting, theatre, and visual art, she is drawn to the places where memory becomes unstable, identity begins to fracture, and the familiar quietly turns strange. Her work explores transformation, absence, silence, and the hidden lives of things that appear ordinary. Her play, Legend of Reality, rooted in the mythological world of the Shahnameh, has received national-level approval for stage production and is forthcoming in performance. Across forms, she seeks to create intimate, atmospheric works that leave questions behind rather than answers—and continue unfolding in the mind after the work itself has ended.