I remember a time when my heart ached for release. My mother’s voice etches itself on my back, cursing my existence. I used to walk on familiar ground, kiss both cheeks, speak my mother.

Who are you?

You who resembles parts of my face, a pupil of my identity. You who wails at night, the destress under my pillow.

If I could detach myself from your aching body, I would find peace in my solitude. Yet your body sketches stories, too sad to be called stories. I cry out to my mother every night, I’ve stabbed myself it seems.

Mama, this demon resides in my entity, I see dead children in my dreams. White faces hover over my corpse paint me, however, you please.

The world spins in my hands, a child of anxiety. If I close my eyes I might die, this is how he got to me.

Skin to skin used to ease my fears until I saw you slobbering over me.

How do I break this universe, can I challenge God for what he has done to me?

Mama, I dream of dead children who cry out my name. They tell me that kids like me should’ve died years ago. Every step is followed by a drought, I cannot be responsible for all of them.

When the world hushes, the monsters escape from under my bed. You used to tell me that I’m a lucky girl, but mama if this is luck, then why does it hurt so much?

“Do I look like them?”

Mama, you tell me that war leaves its mark on our bodies. That explains your rough fingers, the lines on your face. You tell me that I’m lucky, I still have a face that wasn’t touched by fear and worry. You tell me that I’m beautiful, not in the vain sense, not in an Earthly way.

Then, how?

I don’t feel beautiful, Mama. Some days I don’t even feel like a human being. My arms had been pinned down by evil. My legs had been scratched by fear. Even parts of my face mirror the war. How could I be beautiful if he still resides in me?

What kind of joke is this? And why do you always have to lie? There’s nothing beautiful about me. Then, how? How could you say that?

You tell me that there’s life in me, something that had died long ago within you. I’m your song, what could’ve been. I’m your girl, a face that once was yours. A proof of God’s mercy. A promise of survival.

That’s how, you survived.

They tell me that surviving is a matter of time, a single night could kill an entire generation. They tell me to live, to breathe on behalf of my mother, and her mother, and all the damned mothers before us.

They tell me that I’m lucky,

Luck,

Traces of the war reside inside me. Once it enters, it never leaves. Echoes of the past forms on my face.

Boom.

They got us.

Mama, when will the war end? When can I say my name and have it mean only my name, not what was left behind? Who will be lost in this story? Where do broken children go? My grandmother’s skin threads itself onto me, leaves a mark. Damn this existence. I’m so fucking lucky,

to survive, because think of the kids who didn’t.

What happens to us now?