picture this: you’re a child and nations are tumbling down around you like dominoes.

your mother tells you it will be okay because your nation is like no other and you think: she’s either naïve, or she’s lying.

(it’s probably the former because she’s much happier than you and you’re a child who has yet to see enough shades of blue.)

this is why she’s wrong:
you’re a child and you don’t learn about the world wars of the twentieth century because you live in a city that predates any and all gods; in the cradle of civilisation, and your history textbooks are full of summarised stories about hundreds of kingdoms that have risen and fallen right here, beneath your feet.

and that is why you’re not naïve:
who is to say that your nation is like no other when the city you live in is still an enigma, built on the ruins of seven cities that shared her name, like the same phoenix burning over and over and rising again and again, in a constant state of death and rebirth? humanity is ephemeral, so its cradle and its deathbed might as well be one and the same.

nations are tumbling down around you like dominoes. they call it spring and you know it’s coming for you, and it arrives before winter dies. it’s the shortest winter you live.




now picture this: you’re a child. flashbacks. nightmares. the name of god can trigger a panic attack.

you skip fridays at school until schools decide to make fridays and sundays weekends, and saturdays are school days stuck in the middle.

(you’re always stuck in the middle. you haven’t seen enough shades of blue but you know it’s better than all the grey.)

(every time a dog barks, you know shells will fall, and every time a bomb goes off, you know the pressure will reach you before the sound, and every explosion is followed immediately by another so the ones who rush in to help are the ones who will die next. you’re just a child, though, and you’ll always be stuck at home, being grey.)

your mother is naïve until she starts listening to you —

she’s upset you spend too much time online because she doesn’t want you to escape but only in your head.

“live with us,” she says, and you know she wants you to stay because there’s a list of names of those who left. (you envy them because your humanity is ephemeral and they’re now immortal, unlike this city and every heartbeat within its walls.)








finally, picture this: picture the loneliness of invisibility and the ache of exhaustion in your lung after you scream for hours. no one sees, and no one hears. no one cares. and sometimes, you’re too tired to care too. can you blame yourself? you’re a child. you’re a child and nations are tumbling around you like dominoes and all you can think is let the whole world burn down. sometimes you’re as naïve as your mother and all you can think is we will rise again. we always do.

picture this: you’re a child. no one cares because people like you are just meant to suffer. only people like you. the world isn’t fair. they will remember you, though, as collateral damage, and they will honour your fleeting presence on this earth by writing movies about the horrible few months their soldiers have spent in your lifeless desert before coming home with flashbacks, nightmares, panic attacks triggered by the name of a god they’ll never meet, and wrinkles you don’t know if you’ll live long enough to have.

(it’s okay, you convince yourself.
you want immortality, and sometimes this means you have to die young.
deep down, you know it means you just don’t want to die at all.
and what do you know of death, anyway? you’re just a child and you can’t tell apart grey from blue.)