Child of War
"take your war away from me" I said, and then I clung to it with my hands and my feet, still begging for it to let go. This war lives inside me; to separate myself from it is to deny my own existence. I am a child of war. I was born under skies lit up with missiles, my newborn cries muffled by the sound of bombs outside the hospital window. I know it like i know my mother's womb, because the first sound I heard upon arriving to this Godforsaken world was not that of the woman cradling me in her arms, but that of the enemy claiming my land the moment it became mine, holding my miniscule hand in promise that this war will never end, even if the missiles stop; it will sound at the back of my head as the first thing i have ever heard, it will keep mocking me, long as i exist, and taking away the things that were supposed to be mine like my hometown and the sacred garden of my grandparents' house, and all my favorite memories that float around, now forever lost, since the walls they lived in were turned into rubble and dust; like my mother's voice at birth and my father not being so far away, the day i was first brought to this earth. This war may have so many names, depending on the time and place, but don't be fooled, it has always been one and the same. "Take your war away from me", I said but the war is mine, I breathed it in with my first breath and it will stay in my veins till my death, it resides. "take your war away from me", I said but the war won't go until it ends or until I end, at the hands of it.
