Children Of War

This post was written in 2017

I know they’re just words and do NOT necessarily define me as a person.
Or even mildly associate me with heroes, who actually use their strength, Real-time. to aid those caught in the crossfire.

This isn’t a poem,
It’s whatever it is, I know not, And am not bound by those laws.

You are at complete rest.
You smell violet sun-kissed flowers,
Birds bicker amidst the trees as playful lovers,
A Soul-cleansing, dew-blessed breeze abreast,
The early morning sun burning into your skin with the intensity of a snowflake.
But there’s a lil bit of a pinch in the right side of your head,
It starts to grow and threatens to take you away from…. Heaven?
You start to run.
But the pinch has graduated to pain.
And is growing fast.
Darkening your world by absoluteness.
You try to fight it. But you just cannot. It is not under your control.
And it quickly brings you to your knees.
The breeze now smells of dust, making it difficult to breathe.
“OH ” you shout.
As you……discover? ………Sound?
You can hear it.
Voices.
Your heaven is now completely dark,

{
Children of War
As the pinch in my head peaks,
A blinding light slits its way across a dark horizon,
Like a comet hurtling across the night sky,
Ripping the dark fabric and giving way,
To stinging bright vision,
Fluttering colors,
My head hurts,
Where am I?
Where did my heaven go?
Why does everything hurt to touch?
I am in such a heavy daze,
As the bright lights fade to birth my immediate surroundings,
I look at my hands,
They’re bleeding,
Pieces of shattered glass pierced throughout,
And my face,
And my chest,
I must be really hurt,
Why do I not feel pain?
I stand up,
Brush some dirt from my eyebrow,
And look around,
My clothes torn and stained with blood,
A horrifying realization for a five-year-old I know,
But I am,
Only five years old,
Not completely aware,
I realize that my feet cut themselves as I walk around.
Only crushed bricks and wood,
I can see the sky,
I feel something is wrong,
But I have a secret weapon,
A weapon so strong that not even the biggest, meanest monsters cannot touch,
My mother,
I shout out loud “Mummyyyy”
No reply,
“Mummyyyyy!!!!”,
A familiar, sour taste fills my mouth,
From the corner of my lips,
I touch my mouth,
And look at my hands,
There is more blood on them,
A tiny stream dripping from my head onto my neck,
I am afraid,
Where is my mother?
Where is she?
Where is my father and my brother?
Where is my mother?
I stumble on crumbled bricks that hurt my feet,
Why is everything thrown about?
I am very scared because my mamma is not around,
This place is so familiarly strange,
What happened here?
I start to cry and run around wildly,
Hurting myself on wooden chips that seemed to have rained here,
And I trip over a large cement piece,
And I find my mamma,
I am so happy,
She is asleep under that cement piece,
I try to pull my lovely mamma away from it,
And she comes away from it a little too easy,
Why is she so light?
I have tried lifting her before and I never did succeed,
But I realize,
It’s only half my mamma,
Where is the rest of my mamma?
I look around,
Panicking,
I must find all of my mamma,
So she can hold me, and hug me, and kiss me again.
Wait! there is her leg!
I pick it up and place it where it belongs,
I find her right hand too, nearby,
It has a broken cup attached her forefinger like a ring,
I place it back and try to complete my mamma,
But she is still only half,
Covered in blood,
Just like me,
But encrusted in brick-dust,
Her mouth is open and so are her eyes.
And it all comes back to me,

There is usually an earthquake of realization,
Followed by a tidal wave of emotion,
I was actually lucky that I was only a little girl when it happened,
So the real pain didn’t hit me till a few years later,
When I was old enough to feel deeply,
But strong enough to survive the realization,
Of how alone I was, and what was taken from me that early evening,
Therefore, currently immune to the earthquake and the wave,
My papa sat across my room, reading the newspaper worriedly,
And complaining angrily about some airplanes,
My brother must be returning from his friends,
And my mother,
The most beautiful being on Earth,
Finally sitting down on the sofa after a hard day’s work,
With a cup of steaming tea in her hand,
Angry at my brother’s tardiness,
Asking my papa about the “fighting” they’re always talking about,
When it happened,
We heard a plane,
But I remember feeling nothing unusual about it,
Barely had its roars passed over us when it happened,
I felt heat,
I heard something very loud to describe,
I felt a gentle push on my head.
That is how I woke up in my heaven,
But was jolted back to life,

They say an adrenaline rush is almost fatal when you have big open wounds,
It makes your heart pump faster and the blood flows out faster too,
I felt sick,
I had to kneel beside my still mother,
Her hands used to be so soft and pink and clean,
They’re blue and dusty and strangely distorted now,
Pray you never have to feel what I have,
Actually strangely at peace,
Like a child sitting thousands of kilometres away,
Watching me kneel beside a dead body in the TV,
A few words of sadness or disgust or neglect I guess,
Then the child switches to good vibes and cartoons,
Infinitely easier to experience I bet,
Only my TV set was nowhere to be seen,

They say my papa ran out onto the street just before,
The bomb landed on the roof of the tiny cramped home right beside ours,
To see what was going on,
They found his sandals with his feet still in them,
About half a kilometer away,
My mother had gifted them to him with a hug,
Poor people, Us,
Forget expensive iPhones,
A handful of dirt from a loved one,
Was enough to melt our hearts,

And my brother….,
I still ache from the depths of my heart to find out,
He was a very naughty boy,
Bright eyed, Rebellious,
I lied,
I know what happened to him,
But I’d rather not say,
Because I have seen his head,
And what pierced it too,
But I’d rather not say it, lest I feel again,
Because my heart shudders at the very thought,
Of how happy he was,

My father was a very strong man,
He loved my family fiercely,
I bet he went off like a candle flame,
Only much hotter,
And hopefully less painful.
I am still kneeling beside my mamma,
She has become cold,
So I cover her with a torn table-cloth,
I cannot find my papa and my brother,
But I will not leave my mamma alone,
What if she feels hungry?
She is not well.
It is night now,
And people are crowded around us,
They scream at me and cover their eyes in horror,
When they see what I am sitting with,
My best friend who lived next door,
Whose house the bomb had landed on,
Was nowhere to be seen,
I was still curious,
Deep down,
At the age of 5.
I was controlling emotions that hit me like a speeding train,
You see?
When you are sitting where I was,
Dazed,
Still processing,
Denial is a beloved friend.
And mamma was only asleep.

Strange men come close to me slowly,
Mamma had told me about them,
And the mean things they do to little girls like me,
But they do not seem mean,
One of them gives me water,
And breaks down beside me,
Because he understands what is lying beside me,
And he holds my hand,
And tells me to come,
But I shout him away,
Because I will not leave my mamma here,
Because it is night and the dogs are sniffing around my house,
My mamma smells really bad,
But it is only her divine fragrance I smell,
I am blind, deaf and dumb to everything else,
One of them tries to nip at mamma’s foot, that I had found,
I repel him away with a broken piece of wood nearby,

There are strange people walking through my house,
Murmuring sadly at me,
Picking up familiar things lying around,
And leaving with them,
Not asking me permission before doing so,
But you see, I was at that point,
A scared, hurt, bleeding, lonely little girl,
Far above material,
Grew up in a matter of seconds,
Ripped right through my childhood,
All because,
A well-fed, well-suited, well-paid, well-protected,
Fat man in a suit somewhere,
Decided that my beautiful, loving, caring,
Mamma would never even sip her well-deserved tea,
My chest is shivering, it is very cold,
I am very tired, hungry, and my wounds make me very weak,
I fall asleep beside my mamma,
One,
Last,
Time.

I woke to a nurse days later,
Stitches on my face,
And pain all over my body,
The TV on the wall showing all the others,
Mothers, Fathers, Brothers and Sisters,
Best Friends who did not make it,
The true extent of my little loss,
Homes, Toys, Flowerpots, Gardens,
That I dearly miss,
I am alone now,
Sitting on a road,
Having run away from my abusive orphanage,
16 years old,
But luckier than most others to survive,
I have a disease I know nothing about,
Or have the luxury to be dealt with,
Which makes me feel very sick and disoriented,
I am thin, gaunt, and very hungry,
And I drool sometimes,
When hunger overcomes me,
And I must run desperately to stop it,
Or search for my beloved White Helmets,

Trust me, I was really beautiful once,
But I now bear hideous markings of life on my body,
Scars that cover it,
Like maps and murals,
And eyes that see everything,
I need help,
But I do not trust it,
In this war-torn country,
Where mere existence is a daily challenge,
Forget friends and school and new things,
You literally must kill for water,
When the good helicopters and helmets fail to arrive to help,
With the most unintentional, valid reason I still hope,

I am not savage,
I am not violent,
I still am the soft dew-kissed flower petal you destroyed,
But it’s not your happy, organized, safe, disillusioned world out here,
Life is very severely real,
I salvage by day,
And hide like a mouse by night,
Food is scarce,
Begging for a few hours gets me a meal,
I dress like a boy to protect me,
Crying continuously just like before,
Torn from the insides,
Do you know how earth-shatteringly alone I am?
Do you really?
Do you?
No. You don’t.

Leave your problems at the doormat,
When you walk into my life,
Because I will tell you stories that might not cheer you up,
Like the time I began to forget my mother’s face,
I have no photo, nothing remained,
And her scent,
And her love,
Ahhh
I close my eyes to a warm day-dream,
Only for seconds before reality muscles its way into my thoughts,
Remember the little shard of heaven I tasted,
Savour every lost moment,
And realize that,
Despite how much you stepped on me,
I will survive,
And follow the stereotype of the survivors,
And make it big in this hellhole one day,
Only so that,
I can make you feel my pain,
And you can appreciate yours much more,
To run away from this life,
And hide myself,
Somehow, one day,
Before I follow her footsteps,
I will reclaim the price I had to pay,
For my innocence,
Yours Faithfully,
Aximili,
}
This post was written in view of the indiscriminate civilian bombings in Aleppo and Syria overall.
Please spread the message of peace.
Kids are not meant to be in war,
It is truly heart breaking.
At least, divert war from cities to non-populated areas or outer space.
I do not know what the opinion on this post is gonna be like. But someone once cried while reading it so that's enough for me.

Image Source : The internet