Perhaps you are twelve,
a little older, a little younger.
I will assume younger.
War ages you.

An eclipse swallows the stars of your pupils,
and extends to your eyelids,
heavy sacks filled by days of
running, rushing under a gray sky, blood-soaked earth,
and a gnawing hunger.

The harshness of today,
the fear of tomorrow,
two mountains crushing
the youth of your cheeks.
They sink and mold two hollow graves,
resting grounds for a robbed childhood.
Your charcoal hair is a midnight’s tale,
streams of silk chasing
the arcs of your brow.

In a stolen verse of the story of you
you’re sixteen, standing tall
before your bedroom mirror,
a bottle of hair gel in one hand,
fingers running through your hair,
sculpting rebellion into every strand,
lifting them upwards
as high as your spirits soared.

What name befits your gentle soul?
You look like a Bassel to me,
Aziz to your mother,
perhaps Assim to your father,
Karim to your friends.
We create names of our own,
you see, but my child,
your name deserves to be
the echo of the rustling leaves,
the chatter of the birds at dawn.

You deserve a chance to sing
and clap to the rhythm of your name.

You look right, then left,
no soul in sight, just you
and a pile of flesh,
remnants of an untold story,
a life turned into fragments.

You gather it piece by piece.
The anatomy must be confusing
to a child like you.
Was it a woman? A man?
A child? An elder? You don’t know.
You are not a doctor or a coroner.
And this is not clay of the first creation.
You are not a god
to restore its original form,
to breathe life into it from your soul.

You struggle with the pieces,
although you once prided yourself
for your exceptional talent
at assembling puzzles,
piece by piece, placing them
gently on a white sheet.

Looking right,
looking left.
No one. Just you, alone
with the remnants of creation.

And the warlords decided that, today,
you are no longer a child.