The cries of a child are heard beneath the rubble,
but no one moves an inch.
On a strip of earth hemmed in by sea and smoke.
A sliver lodges near his lung, each breath sharpening it,
each gasp teaching it how to hurt.
He calls out again, again
his small lungs burning,
desperation drumming against his ribcage.
He cries for his mother,
but she is somewhere under the same sky
in pieces the world will never count.
Across the ocean, people line their mouths with gluttony,
they stitch their comfort with threads,
pulled from someone else’s skin.
Laughter spills
wine stains white tablecloth
red.
They write lines of script that kills,
hold hands and sing sermons,
their indifference poised between a tap and scroll,
there was time.
there was power.
Under the rubble,
his body trembles.
Flies land on his open wounds,
crawl across the dirt-caked curve
of his cheek.
His eye, half-lidded,
stares at a single shard of sky
as if begging it to widen,
to swallow him whole,
to end the waiting.
Across the ocean, we harvest indulgences disguised as sweetness
from a distant orchard —
never asking why the fruit
tastes faintly of ash,
why every bite
echoes like a falling stone.
They call it ordinary life,
but the market they feed
is a quiet battlefield,
and their wallets march
even when they don’t.
But the boy’s breath begins to slow,
his mind pleading for mercy.
Even after his body stills,
the sound of him doesn’t.
It clings to the dust,
threads itself through shattered beams,
rides the wind across the sea,
a thin, persistent echo.
His blood turns into a trembling river,
carrying fragments of war
through the corridors of a child’s body.
His gaze freezes on that thin slice of sky,
and he never looks away again.
Once again, his chest rises, but does not fall.
The air reaches his lips, pauses,
and chooses not to return.
And long after his breath fades,
the earth still holds his shape
an absence carved deep enough
to shame the living,
if they ever dare
to look.
And the blood on the rubble
is not nearly as red
as the blood on our hands.