May 16, 2025.
A Morning in Ruins
In the early morning, I pull myself out of this catastrophe that has turned into an everyday occurrence. My eyes are closed and I absent-mindedly stare at the completely bulldozed lands next to my family’s home street that is no longer recognizable, full of rubble all around. I am not envious nor covetous, but I want to live. To simply live! I don’t know how to simply live. To wake up safe, to feel safe, to be safe. A loud bomb several steps away from me turns my thinking to, “We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus!”
The Weight of Survival
I’ve lived every shape of terror they’ve crafted, designed, refined, and unleashed. I’ve seen torn bodies littered everywhere, witnessed death firsthand, and fled the horror many times, this time I fled as well. Blood is on my hands, dust is in my lungs, and deathly silence resides in my ears. I have screamed, cried, and screamed again. Can I just simply live? I don’t dramatize my pain or romanticize my grief, but I live in a tragedy filled with pain, lodged in sorrow, untold and unseen. My heart leans on songs depicting love without tragedy and on poems woven to hurt and to make me cry with longing. I think of the past. It was good. It is good. Safe! Warm! Very warm!
That evening:
To evacuate is to die thousand deaths.
Against the cracked stack of bricks next to my partly torn tent, contemplating how unfathomable this war has been and wondering how it will end. If ever. Should I have to leave my tent, my “home”? Should I have to evacuate again? If I remain, will I be killed? Will I starve to death? Isn’t it true that fate is inevitable and death is destined? How painful will it be, then, if I don’t leave?
Robots, drones, quadcopter, and F-16s drop bombs everywhere, madly and without pattern. We run barefoot, hungry, and scared. I pull myself together and reluctantly wave a goodbye to my home, wholly shattered, and uncertain if I’ll ever go back again. I whisper into the night, “Grandma, come back!” But the only answer is the echo of our own voices, swallowed by the darkness we hate, no blankets, no beds, no cuddling, and no bedtime story.
Shattered again ….
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