What does it mean to be human in a world that continually decides who deserves to be seen?

I Wish I Was a Person is an Afro-surrealistic poetry collection exploring identity, invisibility, race, grief, love, faith, family, power, and the restless search for belonging. Through surreal imagery and unflinching reflection, Sheaji transforms personal memory and political history into poems populated by mango trees, mirrors, mortars, mothers, lovers, gods, and ghosts.

Moving through three parts: We Were Promised Freedumb, This Is My Last Poem About You, and Mukhaddar: Sacrifice the Sun, the collection travels from the violence and contradictions of the wider world into the intimacy of heartbreak, childhood, ambition, family, and self-perception. Each poem examines the distance between being alive and being recognized as fully human.

At once tender, confrontational, mournful, and darkly playful, these poems ask what remains of a person after the world has renamed, priced, ignored, desired, disciplined, and remembered them. They speak to the experience of feeling too visible and invisible at once, of searching for proof that your voice, your body, and your memories matter.

For anyone who has ever stood on the outside looking in and wondered, Am I real enough? Worthy enough? Human enough? this collection offers no simple answer. Instead, it creates a home within the question and reminds the reader: you are seen, you are known, and you matter.