What if your house is bombed and you are
buried alive under rubble?

Shards of backfill cover your eyes. Time, your antagonist:
Tick tock, tick tock

Under the hollowed-out hole of your bedroom
ceiling, which you had painted in bright colors,
your tiny body struggles to move.
Tick tock, tick tock

A motionless silence — as
if you are
caught
in a
trap
in an inaccessible
forest. Will anyone
try to rescue you?

You hear nothing except the
echoing sound of your rapid breathing.
Your desperate hands begin to fumble around.
Fingers approach your partially open eye and
find blood flowing like ink oozing from an inkwell.
Tick tock, tick tock

A shadowless darkness everywhere. You want to scream
but your voice suffocates in your throat.
Tick tock, tick tock

Your ears fail to detect any sound.
Tears mix with blood, fall from your eyes.
They close gently.
Tick tock, tick tock

The sun will not rise today,
nor will it set.
Tick tock,
tick tock,
tick to